Salutations!

Today’s Topic: "Fascinating Facets!...and Emojis, Emojis Everywhere!

Enterprise, our public access catalog, is really very powerful.  Did you know you can fine-tune your search not only to include certain things, but also to exclude certain things?...Read more...

When searching for things in the public catalog, sometimes the results are overwhelming. That's where facets come in. “Facet” is another term for “Limit.”  There is a LOT one can do with facets in the catalog. Facets are found under the "Limit Search Results" heading on the hitlist of the catalog.

Say you are helping a patron look for stories about hedgehogs. Your patron already knows all about hedgehog care, they just want some nice stories--but not DVDs and definitly not Sonic the hedgehog video games!!  I started by just typing in "Hedgehogs" and clicking "Search." You can see I got 261 results. If you scroll down you can see all the options to Limit your search: Library, Specific Format, Date, eMaterial, Age Group, Series, Language, Author, Subject. Let's limit to Fiction:

Notice that the word "Fiction" is a link. If you only want to limit to include Fiction, you can simply click on the link. If you wanted your limit to include Fiction and Unknown, you'd need to check both boxes and cilck "Include."  That brings us donw to 164 results.  Let's get rid of the DVDs and Video Games:

Notice that not all the Specific Formats appear in the list. You'll need to click on "More" or "View All" to see the rest.  After checking the 2 boxes we want, click the "Exclude" button.  That brings us down 132 results.  The top of the Limit column now shows both of the limits we have added.

If you relate to Boolean search terms, you'll realize that facets get put together with an "AND."   So, find "hedgehogs AND Fiction AND NOT (DVD OR Video Game). Otherwise, just be aware that the more limits you add (even when excluding) the fewer results you'll get.

You've also probably noticed that I haven't mentioned the Library Limit or the Only Show Available button....they do not always behave as expected.

"Library" will limit search results to titles with copies owned by the selected library. However, since the catalog already puts your library's copy on top for the holdings, and since patrons place holds and items circulate freely, this limit is somewhat less helpful. Where it might come in handy is to see what is at neighboring libraries. For example, Include both Neenah and Menasha, and it will return titles owned by either library.

Officially, the "Only Show Available" button--especially in conjunction with limiting by Library--is supposed to show titles owned by the chosen library with any Available copy(ie, not just available at the chosen library). In Boolean jargon, it is supposed to be doing an "OR".  Officially, this will be fixed when we do our next upgrade (hopefully end of year or early 2022).   However, it may already be fixed, because I could not recreate the faulty "OR" search results when writing this 'Minder. However, the definition of "Available" seems to mean "not checkedout."  Copies that are On Hold, In Transit, On-Order all seem to be considered "Available."

Windows 10: Press Windows button + period (.) to insert an emoji in any app (apparently except Drupal!) 

Share & Enjoy!
Karla