Failure Analysis of Subject Searches in a Test of a New Design for Subject Access to Online Catalogs

Abstract

This article describes the findings of a research project that tested a new subject-access design in an experimen- tal online catalog that had a wide range of subject-search- ing capabilities and search trees to govern the system's selection of searching capabilities in response to user que- ries. Library users at two academic libraries searched this experimental catalog for topics of their own choosing, judged the usefuless of retrieved titles, and answered post-search questions about their searching experiences. Mixed results from a quantitative analysis (i.e., precision scores) were supplemented with the more conclusive re- sults from a qualitative analysis (i.e., failure analysis). Overall, analyses demonstrated that the new subject-ac- cess design that featured search trees was more effective in selecting a subject-searching approach that would pro- duce useful information for the subjects users seek than users would select on their own. The qualitative analysis was especially helpful in providing recommendations for improving specific subject-searching approaches to in- crease their efficiency, increase user perseverance, and encourage browsing. It also suggested enhancements to the new subject-searching design to enable systems to re- spond to the wide variety of user queries for subjects.