Improvements to the core Evergreen search code
Three developers in the community made significant changes to the core search code in Evergreen. These changes will become available in the next major Evergreen release, version 2.3. The improvements include:
- A fix for invalid queries that were being generated by the search code;
- More consistency among the number of search results when a search results list is re-sorted;
- The ability to control automatic stemming of search terms. With the new code, surrounding a term in quotations marks will always search for the exact term;
- Fixes an issue where using “does not contain” did not always exclude search terms.
Alphabetical Author, Subject, Title Browsing
MassLNC is the lead sponsor on a project that will allow alphabetical index browsing in the Evergreen catalog. Support for “See” and “See Also” references will also be available. Bibliomation in Connecticut has also contributed funding to this project.
Coding is expected to be complete by the end of March. This new browse search should be available by Evergreen version 2.4.
Support for Traditional Boolean Search Operators
MassLNC sponsored development for an interface to support traditional Boolean search operators. Coding has been complete, and the project is now in the testing phase. If approved by the community, this functionality should be available by Evergreen version 2.4.
Activity Metric to Improve Relevance of Search Results
MassLNC is sponsoring development to allow activity or popularity to be a factor in the relevance of retrieved search results. With this development, if you return a large set of results where many of the same keywords show up in the title, subject, etc. (e.g. a search for “Abraham Lincoln”), this functionality will give a boost to those records that have seen the most activity. This functionality will be highly configurable, allowing activity to be measured by checkout activity, number of holds, number of copies, or a combination of these factors.
Coding has not yet begun. This functionality is expected to be available by Evergreen version 2.4.
Source:
Kathy Lussier
March 12, 2013