Most of this posting repeats a message sent to the LIBOPAC-L and TS-PLAN lists Oct. 16, 2008. A helpful MANGO/Endeca report from FCLA’s Josh Greben sent the following day provided additional understanding about work being done by FCLA on various expansions of scope of MANGO and how these might be better accomodated, upcoming addition of call number browse, location mapping, and other MANGO development notes. He reported an “attack” that skewed UF statistics Sept. 2008 with a false peak. Smaller peaks in fall 2007 and Feb. 2008 seemed to make sense in that a lot of new users were likely beginning to use MANGO at those times and they might have been exploring the new search system to learn how it worked and maybe taking extra searches at first to find what they needed.
The adventure of sharing development of the Endeca OPAC as a statewide online catalog began about 2 years ago and the “MANGO” product has been in use for more than a year now. I would like to thank FCLA and the OPAC Subcommittee for having implemented an exciting and powerful discovery tool for users with many valuable new features. There are, however, a few important questions I must pose on behalf of better service for library user communities at UF. I expect some of you may have been wondering similarly, and would be interested to hear your questions and concerns.
1. Phrase searching. Can phrase searching in MANGO which now requires exact entry including diacritics and punctuation be enhanced so exact entry will not be necessary? If not, how can users be given aid in coping with this limitation? Users now can only assume we don’t have what they don’t find. In Aleph phrases can be entered with or without diacritics, so users might wrongly expect that to be true in MANGO. This is particularly important for retrieval of foreign language materials which very frequently use diacritics (and by recent report make up more than one fifth of the collection at UF). Some of us have developed a webpage with searching tips for foreign language materials to try to provide users with information about this.
2. Browse searching. How will we provide adequate browse searching? The early choice had been to develop browse functionality in the new catalog and eliminate use of Aleph by patrons. This was a questionable departure from the precedent set in the previous Endeca catalog which instead included the native catalog browse option on the basic search page. The expectation of development of fully-functioning browse capabilities in MANGO has not been fulfilled, nor does it appear close, and this needs to be objectively reconsidered along with choices that relied on it. Is it time to redesign the basic search screen to remove the limited MANGO browse and replace it with well-identified search box for the Aleph browse? If and when FCLA is eventually able to develop a better and fully-functioning browse it could then replace it. Burial of the Aleph browse option on the bottom of the advanced search screen undesirably hides it from naïve users and makes it less convenient for those who know about it and require it for basic known-item searching, etc. Some problems associated with the currently offered MANGO browse that even staff may not fully appreciate are:
a. Only main titles (245 fields) are included with no explanation of this fact to users (or staff). Title added entries for alternate forms of titles, series titles, uniform titles, and analytical titles for chapters or volumes can only to be searched using Aleph at the present time. Series titles retrieved using browse in Aleph have the advantage of listing in series number order which is especially valuable to science and engineering users.
b. Only primary author names (1xx fields) are listed. There is no explanation to users about this restriction. There are no cross-references to other forms of author names and no co-authors or other name headings which are available in Aleph.
c. No subject browse is given. Subject browse searches in Aleph benefit from cross-references. Subject searching is particularly valuable for foreign language materials which are even less able to be comprehensively retrieved using keywords found in titles, etc. than are English language materials. Comprehensive retrieval while perhaps not a priority for many undergraduate users remains important to various more advanced and specialized communities of users at UF (Area Studies, for example).
3. Scope of Catalog. How can the unprecedented swelling of the numbers of records in MANGO resulting from addition of PALMM, CRL, and other resources such as articles be managed for optimum benefit to users? Relevancy ranking has been mentioned. Some have mentioned that other systems that include large numbers of mixed resources use options like that in OCLC.org where in the basic search box users select tabs to include “everything”, “books”, “CDs”, “DVDs” or “articles” in a search. FCLA is already testing the CRL records and working to determine overlap with our holdings, explore whether or not to merge the bibliographic records, ways to display them so that it will be easy for patrons to submit ILL requests when that is appropriate and not wrongly submit requests for items we own or that are online, etc. (Maybe if the records are not merged the relevancy ranking could be tweaked so duplicates would display together? Could this also help with reproductions and serial title changes if OCLC numbers in all fields could be used to bring related records together in displays?) Other thoughts or concerns?
4. Cluttered displays and usability. When does the results display become too cluttered? We have added more and more icons as more features were developed, and usability testing has not yet been able to be performed adequately due to the lack of consistency. By the time one completes usability studies the conditions studied no longer exists. Might we consider scheduling a postponement of minor enhancements to the OPAC for a period of time to allow for development and implementation of a valid evaluation process to inform our directions? I believe there are some capable researchers eager for such an opportunity.
5. OPAC Names. Could we please name the “new” and “previous” catalogs? (No contests, please). The new one is no longer new, and the previous one continues to be required. MANGO could get an exciting name like “MANGO Discover Catalog” or something like that, and Aleph could get some boring reliable sounding name like “Standard Library Catalog”. As the content of MANGO becomes increasingly greater than that in Aleph its character also evolves in a new way. Renaming it could serve to illuminate that distinctive evolution which becomes increasingly confusing to users and staff alike.
I look forward to reading your comments and concerns.
Jimmie
