Factors affecting subject catalog search success

Abstract

Abstract The study examined the effects of two variables on success in searching an academic library subject catalog that uses Library of Congress subject headings. The vari‐ables were “subject familiarity,” and “catalog familiar‐ity,” representing patron knowledge of a subject field and of the principles of the subject heading system, re‐spectively. Testing was done in a laboratory setting which reproduced a real search situation. The n varied with the particular test, but about 20 university students in each of the following majors participated: psychology, economics, librarianship. Success was measured as degree of match between search term and term used by the library for desired books on the subject. Catalog familiarity was found to have a very signifi‐cant beneficial effect on search matching success, and subject familiarity a slight, but not significant, detri‐mental effect. An interview substudy of subject experts suggested causes for the failure of subject expertise to help in catalog search term formulation. Surprising results were that overall matching success was strikingly low. Since the methodology used enabled a more precise determination of match success than has been typical of catalog use studies, it appears that people may be less successful than we have thought in using subject catalogs.

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