[Sigia-l] Best Bets - a Federated Search?

[Ken Bryson]

> Also, I think typically with Best Bets the payload is a list
> of URLs just
> like a search engine would deliver.  But in ours the metadata is not
> identical to what the search engine spits out.  Go to
> search.msu.edu and
> search for "human resources" for an example.

I don't want to pick on msu in particular, but the search site has a couple
of deficiencies, in my view.

The presentation of the best bets, or keyword results, leaves a lot to be
desired.  First off, it's not clear to me (at least the me that's trying to
think like a dead end user) what happened to get those results at the top.
Clearly they are some kind of attemt to say "these are the one's we think
you want" followed by the list of "everything else". However, that's not
what the text says. It says " 2 MSU Keyword(s) matched your query" which
confuses me.

What's an MSU Keyword? How can I find other keywords to help me in my
searching?

Getting to the point, the "keyword" message describes what happened in
relation to the system, not what happened with my search action. I don't
want to know what happened behind the scenes, I just want to get on with
finding what I want. Especially if the system message tells me about some
"keywords" that I have no access to and only ever interact with when I've
stumbled accross some in my normal searching behaviour.

You should replace that sentence with something like "Try these sites first"
or "Here are the most relevant results".

Otherwise, give people access to the keyword list so they can refine their
searching techniques to harness the power of the metadata you've worked hard
to build behind the scenes.


cheers,


ken