IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamest/v46y1995i2p146-151.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effectiveness of surname‐title‐words searches by scholars

Author

Listed:
  • Frederick G. Kilgour

Abstract

This article reports the findings of an experiment employing a simulated scholarly use of an online public access catalog (OPAC) to determine the frequency of one‐screen displays when a scholar searches for a known‐item with so‐called “keywords” in an implied boolean system. The experiment revealed that a “keyword” search formula comprising surname plus first and last title words produced a single screen 92.8% of the time, thereby reducing the failure of traditional title searching to produce single screens by nearly one half; such a formula also enables a scholar to search successfully with abbreviated, unsearchable bibliographic citations. Additional research should be carried out, for if it is further demonstrated that replacing traditional bibliographic catalog entries with transcribed title pages provides an improved known‐item OPAC, users would benefit and libraries would enjoy huge savings. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Suggested Citation

  • Frederick G. Kilgour, 1995. "Effectiveness of surname‐title‐words searches by scholars," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 46(2), pages 146-151, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:46:y:1995:i:2:p:146-151
    DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199503)46:23.0.CO;2-M
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199503)46:23.0.CO;2-M
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199503)46:23.0.CO;2-M?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:46:y:1995:i:2:p:146-151. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.