On Mon, 30 May 2005, Kevin K wrote:

> Hi Chris,
>
> I like it.  We've been playing with something similar.
> We start with keyword (instead of the the left-anchored search)

I'm using a left-anchored search at the moment because I don't know how to
get to the Voyager keyword indexes through the back-door yet.  A keyword
search on the raw SQL tables is way too slow; the anchored search is
faster.  So at the moment this is a case of "design from ignorance".  If
this gets put to real use, I'd make an effort to integrate it with the
OPAC so that it would start with an OPAC subject keyword search.

> and then list the book titles along with the subject headings attached
> to them.  THEN we gather up all the subject headings and re-display
> them.

I considered adding titles, but was afraid of cramming too much
information on a page and it's possible to go back to the OPAC for that.
Maybe a list of titles from one subject and then a list of related
subjects would do, like the example Mike Rylander pointed to.

> We're finding this list of SH's to be too long, so we are playing with
> gathering
> up only the most "popular" title's and limiting our gathering up of
> subject headings
> to only those most popular books.
>
> Popularity is a number based on Holds, Circs, Copies, Media types
> purchased.  ( and
> date(s) purchased?)

I'd be wary of a "popularity" measure, unless it could be turned on or off
at the user's discretion.  I had more in mind a serious, scholarly search
than a casual interest search, so _I_ would want to be able to see
everything and not have an algorithm filtering for me.  My "Isandlwana"
example is a good one because the first level brings back 1 subject, the
second level brings 3 and only at the third level do you get 21 subjects.

Even so at each step you can be selective and narrow results that are too
wide.  That interplay between widening and narrowing a search as you go
and learn what's available and how it's categorized is what I was trying
to capture.  (Much better than the 80 or so pages of hits Google gives you
on "Isandlwana".)

If anything, I think the way to make it more managable would be to add
some sort of tracking device (like a shopping cart/bookbag/reference
manager) so that you could save individual subjects and books as you go
along.

> We've only just started playing with this, it was nice to be able to
> play with
> yours and see that others are thinking along the same lines.

Thanks and Cheers,
Chris