Challenges in Discovery Work: No Results Doesn't Mean You Can't Get It

2018-03-23 cataloging, discovery, tech

cross-posted and adapted from a post on our internal staff blog

In our work on the Penn State Libraries’ Bento search project, part of our larger-scale work to improve discovery, one of the challenges we encounter is that we really do control what goes into the system. Not that we control what’s indexed in the Cat or Summon, or how databases or archival materials are described (kind of), but in how we choose to search against these things and what we do when we don’t get any results back.

What does getting no results actually mean? Things it may mean include:

  • your search term was poorly-structured,
  • your search term was well-structured but its structure didn’t match our data,
  • we’re not providing a search against a comprehensive index, e.g. we have the article you need, but it’s in a database that’s not indexed in Summon,
  • we really don’t have the thing you need but can get it via ILL,
  • or just maybe you want something which doesn’t exist.

I wish I could recall and credit the first person who pointed out that just because a search didn’t turn up any databases, it didn’t mean we should imply we don’t have databases on this subject. She was doing an early Bento test, before the beta, and her topic was primarily available through databases which aren’t indexed in Summon (which didn’t show up, another area we’re addressing). I believe the message at the time was along the lines of “no databases found. Try [links to viewing them]”. While it directed her toward our databases, it didn’t indicate that she might have success looking for the same thing if she went there, nor that one could explore by subject. So we changed the no-results message to:

Looking for more ways to find articles and material? Try our library database subscriptions. Browse by subject or title.

We’ve heard this as a recurring concern and began adding messages in other sections. The kind of material being returned in each section, how we make that material available, and our general knowledge of what might cause such errors has led to the form of our messages. For example, the messages about articles or books/media both begin by suggesting a revised search. Since, in journal articles, we have some limits on what gets returned, I also added a link to the full Summon search. You can also get to articles through our databases and this seemed like an excellent opportunity to highlight the ongoing subject organization work. And, of course, if you know what article you’re looking for and Summon isn’t returning anything, you can request it via ILL. I think it would be controversial to include a link to Google Scholar, but I also wonder whether it might be helpful to acknowledge that it’s part of many of our grad student and faculty patrons’ workflows. We haven’t done that, but I have asked my colleagues for opinions.

Current Error Messages

These are the error messages for each section as of 2018-03-23. In the version I published on the staff site, I included ways PSU library workers could give feedback. I’m also interested in external comment on the phrasing, in particular, things which you’ve found confuse people searching your site. Because we have about 100,000 undergraduates at Penn State, I’d be particularly interested in feedback re: either novice library users or undergraduates.

Journal Articles

Revise your search to find articles, book chapters, and more. Or try using LionSearch, a subject-specific database, or our ILL services.

Books and Media

Find books, music, films, and more by revising your search, searching The Cat, or requesting things Penn State doesn’t own.

Archival Materials

Looking for archival materials? Browse our finding aids.

Our Website

No results found on the library website.

This is the only result for which we still say “no results” as the library website both the easiest to index – though we are likely moving away from Google’s custom search to Drupal’s built-in search – and the page already includes links to major pages on the library’s website.

Databases

Looking for more ways to find articles and material? Try our library database subscriptions. Browse by subject or title.

Expert Help

Need expert help? Try browsing our Experts List by subject.

Library Guides

Need material on a topic or for a particular course? Browse our guides.

I’d like to thank our lead bento developer Banu Kutlu for making fields like the no-results message part of a Drupal form which people with appropriate permissions can update. Although we don’t intend to be constantly changing them, not having them hardcoded lowers the barriers in the long-term for making improvements to these messages.