On 5 Oct 2002, at 21:00, Andrew Arensburger wrote: Therefore, you conclude, if you see
Author: _________________ Title: _________________ Subject: _________________ [Search]
you can fill in "Asimov" as the author and "astronomy" as the subject, and get all the books written by Asimov on the subject of astronomy. This isn't what the page does: it ignores the author entirely, and displays a list of subjects that have the word "astronomy" in them.
True and it's an unwelcome surprise to some patrons
IMHO it'd be better to start by changing the page layout:
Keywords: ________________ Author: ________________ Title: ________________ (*) Normal ( ) Exact Series: ________________ (*) Normal ( ) Exact Illustrator: _____________ Subject: ________________ Item type: [Choose an item type] [Search]
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Subject: ________________ [Search]
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Barcode: ________________ [Search]
(And maybe drop the Dewey search. I don't know.)
The Dewey search is useful if you know the class number of the subject you want (eg from a book you've already read) and want to know what else is available in that area. It's a useful partner to a subject search, which can do the same thing - but the Dewey search takes you straight to the books, while the subject search, as you observed, is a two-stage process, taking you first to a list of subject headings.
For the first search, all of the terms would be combined: the search would return all books that match all of the criteria. The second search would return a list of subjects, the way it's currently done. The third search would find a specific book, as you'd expect. This layout seems more intuitive to me.
I agree. Good explanation. Cheers Rosalie Blake Head of Libraries, Horowhenua Library Trust