Monday, September 26, 2005
Most popular searches
Stephen Abram, the author of the ground-breaking "Born with the Chip" article about the information attitudes of Millennials, made an interesting suggestion on his blog this weekend: "How about offering (sanitized just like Lycos) lists of the most popular online searches at the local library to the local press?"
Intriguing idea. I checked the stats for searches on OPLIN's OneSearch and found this top 25 for the past 6 weeks:
Intriguing idea. I checked the stats for searches on OPLIN's OneSearch and found this top 25 for the past 6 weeks:
- Enter your search topic here.
- Monkey's Paw
- yahoo.com
- death penalty
- www.Yahoo.com
- yahoo
- dysleix
- sanborn maps
- auto repair
- sanborn
- heritage quest
- Hurricane Katrina
- genealogy
- ohio
- google.com
- Neighbor Rosicky
- science
- pickaway ross vocational adult classes
- census
- child abuse
- obituaries
- geneology
- ebay
- Cleveland Ohio
- Most people just click the "Go" button rather than following the instructions to "Enter your search topic here." That's a usability issue that we should address.
- Many people use the search form instead of the browser address bar to type in website addresses. That's a training issue, but I think usability is a factor too -- after all, if you type "yahoo" into a Google search box or "google" into a Yahoo search box, the first result will be the site you're looking for. Not so with OPLIN OneSearch. I think our search vendor should address this.
- Many people think OneSearch is a site search for OPLIN, a quick way to locate links to resources like "Sanborn Maps" or "Heritage Quest." We should accommodate them by making our site one of the "databases" searched by default.
- Some people treat the OneSearch like a library catalog search, entering subject terms and expecting to be presented with resources that match the subject. Perfectly understandable, but very limited, ignoring the power of OneSearch to look for terms deep inside subscription databases. I wonder how we address this usability flaw?
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I know it's contemptible when people comment on their own blog posts. That said, an Op-Ed piece by Tim O'Reilly in today's New York Times struck me as relevant. O'Reilly describes how the Google Print project will make the contents of books searchable, and I realized that this will help transform the assumptions and expectations of library users. I said that some OPLIN OneSearch users were expecting it to work like a library catalog search, but it won't be long before library catalog users will expect the catalog to work like Google Print.
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