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How is the “Journal” filter in OneSearch populated?
When you click on the “Journal” facet after doing a search, it almost always displays about 20 journal titles. However, in a search with thousands of results, you are obviously retrieving many more journals than that. And it doesn’t look like it’s the top 20 journals, either, because some of the hits for the same title are quite low. So what’s going on?
Most facets are created dynamically from search results. The 200 top-ranked records in a search result are used to create the list of facet values which will display in the “Expand My Results” section. All hits in the search results for those values are counted and the number is displayed in parentheses to the right of the facet value. So, really, it is not the 20 most common journals in the result, it is (at least in theory) the 20 most relevant journals.
Furthermore, the “Journal” facet includes newspaper titles, too, since it’s really a category consisting of serials. The resource type “Newspaper Articles,” on the other hand, refers to just articles within newspapers and “Articles” refers to articles in journals and other periodicals. Material types depend on the way the content is cataloged, whether it is by local catalogers (in the CUNY Catalog and CUNY Academic Works) or by the vendor (in the Primo Central Index).
Restricted search collections in OneSearch
The following list of vendors restricts access to their collections (even to just the metadata, the information that is displayed in the search results) unless the user is on-campus or signed into OneSearch:
- ProQuest
- Scopus
- Web of Science
- ArtStor
- MLA
- Bureau of National Affairs (BNA)
- RMIT Publishing
- American Geoscience Institute
- Henrietta Szold Institute
- Index to Hebrew Periodicals
For the average user of OneSearch, this means that results from these vendors will not show up in his/her searches unless the user is on campus or signed into OneSearch. To circumvent this problem, the Office of Library Services has included a message at the top of the results list to prompt users to sign in if they are not already logged in or if they’re visiting from a non-campus-affiliated IP address:
(For more information about this prompt, please see the entry we wrote when we implemented this feature in July 2015: “Off campus?” prompt now appears only off-campus.)
Depending on the search, the user can expect to see a handful of extra results or thousands of additional records for his/her query! For this reason, everyone is encouraged to sign into OneSearch to get all available results.
Popular OneSearch Searches: February 2016
The following is a list of the top OneSearch search term at each campus (and the CUNY-wide OneSearch instance) between 02/01/2016 and 02/29/2016, organized by the number of times the query had been searched at that library:
- ellis island (205)
- interpersonal spacing (136)
- washington state (120)
- phillips “urban social work” (119)
- “code switching” (78)
- “social media” (76)
- french revolution (75)
- wilderness therapy (60)
- the industrial diet (55)
- world music global journey (52)
- road to brown (48)
- global warming (47)
- culture and personality (36)
- climate change (25)
- willowbrook state school (25)
- octavia butler (21)
- beginning algebra tobey (20)
- lipkind, william (17)
- postpartum depression (12)
- black panthers huey newton (8)
- the death and life of the great american school system (8)
- the functional art (5)
When we performed the top search in that library’s instance of OneSearch, we found some great photos, including this one from the Library of Congress:
Source: Library of Congress
If you haven’t explored all that OneSearch has to offer, what are you waiting for!?
Coming soon to OneSearch: New UI!
Applying the principles of user experience to their findings from user studies and search log analyses, Ex Libris will soon release a new user interface for their discovery system, Primo (aka “OneSearch”). What does this mean for the students, staff, and faculty members of CUNY?
Consistent experience across platforms
One of the key advantages of the new UI is the way it displays on mobile and tablet devices, making OneSearch accessible from any device, any time.
Clean and intuitive interface
The interface of the result list is clean, presenting only data that can help the user easily determine which item to select. If the full text is available, a full-text link is positioned with the item in the result list.
Note the row of icons to the right of each item. Anticipating the user’s next actions, these icons lead directly to the action menu.
Improved “Actions” menu
The action menu is one click from the result list. It enables users to perform actions such as viewing information about an item, sending the information to themselves or a colleague, adding the item to their list of favorites, and saving the item in a reference tool.
Gradual exposure of information
Once the user selects an item, all the available information about it appears.
Seamless “Favorites” (aka “E-Shelf”) experience
The list of favorites has the same look and feel—and provides the same information and action icons—as the result list.
Want to know more about the rationale and reasoning behind the vendor’s decisions? Check out Core Principles for Designing Library Discovery Services (PDF), a white paper released by Ex Libris in November 2015.
The new UI will be available in August 2016. However, the CUNY Libraries will not implement the new design in OneSearch until extensive testing and customizations have been done. The Office of Library Services offers Spring 2017 as a projected date for the new UI rollout at CUNY.
In the meantime, you can check out the preview of the new design in the OneSearch sandbox environment. Please remember that this preview is just that: a preview! It is still in development. (The vendor has made it available for customers to review the proposed changes.) It is best viewed in the Chrome browser.
Popular OneSearch searches in 2015
The year 2015 marked the first full calendar year during which we had our discovery system, OneSearch, up and running across the CUNY libraries. It was a big year, with over 3.7 million searches performed across the University!
If you’re curious about the types of searches performed in an individual campus’s instance of OneSearch, you can access the back office and find all kinds of reports, statistics, and analytics about our users’ experiences with and behaviors within OneSearch. (More information about accessing OneSearch reports is available on the OLS Support Site.)
However, we think it’s also fun to see the big picture! The following is a list of the top search term at each campus (and the CUNY-wide OneSearch instance) between 01/01/2015 and 12/31/2015, organized by the number of times the query had been searched at that library:
henry ford constribution (3,997)
bibliographic and web tools for alternative media. (609)
interpersonal space (606)
gentrification (455)
stereotype threat (446)
spider silk treat damaged nerves (412)
arranged (392)
eliot t s / prufrock (351) *
spread of christianity (285)
fatherless children (265)
self awareness (244)
climate change (238)
students with traumatic brain injury (187)
who moved my cheese (183)
your college experience (162)
schmidt, elizabeth. peasants (161)
ocd treatment (122)
globalization (115)
public housing race poverty (98)
death penalty (58)
pro choice (54)
miss america pageant (31)
* In the reports, slashes (“/”) indicate separate search fields used within the “Advanced Search” screen.
Feel free to peruse the OneSearch back office for local statistics and check out the OLS statistics dashboard for more number-y goodness!
