jnvitti
commented
1 year ago I realized I should clarify -- "title" here can and probably should be broadly interpreted within the MARC record. For example, it should search title (245), uniform title (240), preceding title (780), succeeding title (785), and any non-English title fields (like the 880s that correspond to 245s). The catalogers will be able to provide a better sense of all the fields that include some version of the title.
Is your feature request related to a problem or a change to existing functionality? Please describe. I frequently find that there are far too many search results for terms that I use, many of which are often irrelevant. One example is a title phrase search that returns several pages of results with matching authors, but only one result matching the title. Let's say I wanted to find out whether or not there has been a Festschrift written in honor of Brooks Holifield (owned by Emory). If I manually choose a Title search and write "Brooks Holifield" (with quotation marks), I expect to only get results where his name is in the title of the item, not where his name is in the author or other fields. However, when I tried this in Library Search, I got 23 results, only one of which was relevant (his papers in the archive at Pitts). I had to scroll through 3 pages of results to determine that such a work did not, in fact, exist (at Emory). I got similar results when using Advanced Title search, but with 16 results instead of 23. The equivalent search in OCLC is ti:("Brooks Holifield"), which returns 9 results, all of which have his name in the title (7 journal articles reviewing his books, and 2 archival records). That's much easier and clearer to navigate based on the particular search I input.
Describe the solution you'd like Generally, it would be incredibly helpful to see fewer irrelevant search results. Specifically, for searches other than keyword searches, honor the parameters chosen by the patron. If a patron chooses "Title," then only results with the terms in the title should be returned. (I realize this is somewhat in conflict with my previous feature request to include both the 1xx & 7xx fields for "Author" searches, but both requests follow OCLC and other standard/expected search behaviors.)
Describe alternatives you've considered Use (and direct patrons to) emory.on.worldcat.org instead.
How will this impact users? Having fewer irrelevant search results generally, and honoring the specific parameters when such parameters are set by researchers, will prevent overwhelm and help researchers locate material in a way that is standard for the industry.
Additional context