Mark,
Congratulations on the impressive new site.
I’d be interested in hearing about
how you determined what features to provide for the advanced queries. Did
you do your own user studies or rely on particular published ones? We
recently launched the first phase of our EAD-driven database (http://libfindaids.yu.edu:8082/xtf/search),
which provides for only simple searching at this time. I’m hoping to
provide some enhanced search features, but have been mulling over how much they’re
really used versus the cost of development, whether most users know enough
about LCSH and other controlled terms, if they understand the different parts
of the finding aid, etc. etc. While I feel that it’s great to be
able to provide complex features for the (small set of?) advanced users who
know these things, we are a small staff, and need to maximize how our limited resources
are invested.
So any information or thoughts you (or anyone
on the list) has on this would be most welcome.
Thanks!
________
Deena
Schwimmer, Archivist
mail: 500 W.
185th St.,
email: [log in to unmask] / phone: (212) 960-5451
/ fax:
(212) 960-0066
From: Encoded Archival
Description List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Custer, Mark
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010
11:07 AM
To:
Subject: EAD website redesign at
http://digital.lib.ecu.edu/special/ead/
This
redesign provides enhanced integration with our digital collections repository,
additional browsing options, and advanced search options that facilitate the
construction of complex queries. Just how complex, you might reasonably
wonder? Well, here’s an example, http://bit.ly/cRY2Bs,
which performs a search for the word “outdoor” within 3 words of
“theat??” anywhere in the document, as long as that document has a
Library of Congress Subject Heading applied to it that contains the word
“arts” (and, to think, if we didn’t apply that last
condition, our retrieval set would triple in size!).
Any
suggestions and comments are welcome. Feedback can also be provided via
the Kampyle feedback form, which is accessible from any page of the website by
clicking on the orange image in the lower right-hand corner.
Mark
Custer
Markup
and Text Coordinator
Joyner
Library
Digital
Collections
252-328-5389