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I-Share | News
Voyager Title Indexes Enhanced for Better Recall
CARLI has updated the Voyager "Title" and "Magazine/Journal Title" indexes to improve recall on title searches. Users can now retrieve records by searching for titles in the contents field (505 $t) and by searching for titles without removing initial articles (a, an, the, or their equivalents in other languages).
As announced at the I-Share Cataloging Forum November 1, CARLI has updated the "Title" and "Magazine/Journal Title" composite index definitions in all I-Share databases to include some of the new left-anchored indexes that we built during the Voyager upgrade process this summer. The change will improve the recall on title searches in both the Voyager staff clients and the public catalogs. For details, see below.
What Does This Mean for Searching?
Contents titles from the 505 $t are now retrievable with a general "Title" search.
Users who fail to omit initial articles when they submit "Title" or "Magazine/Journal Title" searches will now meet with better success than they did previously. (Best recall still requires users to omit initial articles.)
Background Information:
Endeavor builds three kinds of indexes into Voyager: "left-anchored" indexes, "composite indexes," and "keyword indexes." For purposes of this announcement, keyword indexes may be ignored.
Left-anchored indexes are field-specific indexes for "starts with..." kinds of searches. The name comes from the fact that in English we read from left to right. Left-anchored indexes cannot be created on the fly in the Voyager System Administration client, the way composite and keyword indexes can be. When we upgraded to Voyager 6.1, therefore, we took the opportunity to build several new left-anchored indexes:
Composite indexes are combinations of left-anchored indexes. For instance, "TALL" is the code for a composite index named "Title," which combines left-anchored indexes of multiple MARC title fields. This is why a title search can retrieve a record based on the title proper, the uniform title or the series title. After our upgrade to 6.1 we updated the TALL and JALL ("Journal/Magazine Title") composite index definitions in each I-Share library's SysAd to include some of the new left-anchored indexes we had built. This improves the recall on title searches in both the Voyager staff clients and the public catalog.
More information about Voyager indexes can be found in chapter 8 of the Voyager System Administration manual. More information about I-Share libraries' use of Voyager indexes can be found under the "Searches and Indexes" heading on the I-Share OPAC documentation page.
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