Monday, January 5, 2009

How do you search?

Finding content is one of the biggest issues with any system.  We would like to hear from you how you search for images in your MDID installation, and also how you wish you could!

For example, do you mostly use the keyword field, or do you use more specific fields like title or creator?  Do you enter multiple words?  Do you prefer AND or OR searches, or need both?

Thank you for your input!
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11 comments:

  1. hs3January 5, 2009 at 4:14 PM

    I think most of my users rely on keyword searches, though I continually encourage them to use the pulldowns for controlled lists of cities and subjects and sech to help them be more specific in their searches. (I love the browse feature, myself, but usually look for specific images by the imagefilename.) I yearn for the day when the users here search the digital images for their own merit, rather than as surrogates for their (beloved and well-worn) 35mm slides... Hahaha

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  2. HeatherJanuary 5, 2009 at 9:45 PM

    Most of my users rely on keywords too, though I encourage them to use the pulldowns. I like the Browse feature.

    I wish there were another way to refine search results other than keyword. I'd like to be able to see how many results are listed as "Painting" or "Sculpture", sort of like with Worldcat.

    Wish list item: a way to implement vocabularies into the search, or a search suggestion feature, so that if someone searches for "Kandinski" they get pointed to "Kandinsky".
    --Heather @ Otis

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2009 at 4:48 PM

    In the older version of MDID we often performed searches using long strings of unique record numbers separated by commas. However, in poking around the latest version of MDID, I have noticed that we can no
    longer do so. When I try to do this action the database tells me that no such records were found. But if I type in one record at a time, it finds the record. This will be a real drag if we can no longer put in long strings of records - as this is how we gather all the records we have created from digitized slides and throw them into slideshows.

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  4. AnonymousJanuary 15, 2009 at 4:49 PM

    In the older version of MDID we often performed searches using long strings of unique record numbers separated by commas. However, in poking around the latest version of MDID, I have noticed that we can no
    longer do so. When I try to do this action the database tells me that no such records were found. But if I type in one record at a time, it finds the record. This will be a real drag if we can no longer put in long strings of records - as this is how we gather all the records we have created from digitized slides and throw them into slideshows.

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  5. MarciJanuary 16, 2009 at 3:19 PM

    I use keyword a lot, but I often will search in multiple fields, i.e. Class=Architecture and Creator=Wright. I often use the filter option. I've made filename & order # searchable, although I'm sure I'm the only one who uses those fields, and mostly for admin. searches (did an order get uploaded? Did a record get corrected?) And/or searches would be good, as would truncated words, we were never able to get Lucene searching to work properly. I would also love to be able to filter by what I'm not looking for (search for Wright, and filter by what isn't Fallingwater).

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  6. knabarJanuary 20, 2009 at 2:13 PM

    Thank you for all the replies so far, we'll incorporate as many suggestions as possible in the next search interface.

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  7. Pet Advocates Of Northeast FloridaJanuary 23, 2009 at 4:48 PM

    I'm curious if there is a way to craft a URL that would execute a search within MDID so I could pass search parameters from other sites to my MDID site? Seems like it might be doable, but, I'm not finding any examples online and haven't had a chance to dig into the code :)

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  8. agrahamtFebruary 9, 2009 at 1:10 PM

    We don't use controlled lists at all with our database. Our main Power User in Art History likes the browse feature to check for errors, I almost exclusively use keyword searches to find materials.
    We also make one keyword common to all records so that a search for that keyword brings up all the images in the collection. While not useful for a huge collection, most users want to browse by image, rather than text. Not really searching, but it does use the current search function.

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  9. knabarFebruary 17, 2009 at 9:16 AM

    Michael: since in MDID2 all requests have to go through the login page, it is not possible to link to a specific search, but MDID3 will support this.

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  10. Skylark StudioFebruary 25, 2009 at 10:45 AM

    My users are miffed by the keyword search - they would like to use it but find that the results (in numbers) are quite a bit less than doing a search by title/country/ID/etc.

    I was under the impression that a keyword search searches all fields ... maybe I'm wrong? or have some mix ups in settings ...

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  11. MBMarch 9, 2009 at 8:49 AM

    Most of our users use the keyword search. I find, though, that for administrative purposes I like the filename and order number search. I would love to be able to have a separate search interface for us administrators, so we wouldn't have to add filename and order number to our public search parameters - they kind of clutter the page, and they are normally of no interest to our users, but they are incredibly useful to us when checking for specific uploads.

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