Explore: tell us what you think
By Robert Drinkall, on 23 September 2011
Explore is our new one-stop service solution for the discovery and delivery of printed and electronic resources.
It allows users to search the library catalogue and a range of our electronic resources and delivers item information, request services, full text or metadata as appropriate to the resource and the user.
Explore will be enhanced further during the academic year 2011/2012 and we welcome your feedback as part of the development process so please post your comments here on our blog.
I think the searching funnction is excellent especially for journals but when searching for books are there any plans to put the books synopsis on as well because you can see the actual book picture but no information is provided when you click through apart from the information that is already available now through eUCLid.
Also I think it would be less confusing if the books had “Due Date” rather than “Status” when looking for there availablity.
Thanks for your comments, Philip.
We’re currently looking at incorporating Amazon and Worldcat links to enhance the default information that Explore provides.
We also appreciate your point about ‘Status’ versus ‘Due Date’ and will look at that too.
Update 7/10/2011
Hi Philip,
We have now enabled links to both Amazon UK and Worldcat to provide further information, including TOC where relevant. We have also renamed the ‘Status’ column to ‘Due Date’ to match the current OPAC. We will be monitoring both changes.
The log in says ‘name’ but not what format, eg intials first or after though I used my user name with no problems.
Thanks for this, Anonymous.
We’ll add some text to clarify which credentials are required for the sign in box.
Update 7/10/2011
Hi Anonymous,
We’ve added some help text to the sign in box.
I noticed that the tabs and site name are both still showing ‘Primo by Ex Libris’ rather than ‘Explore’. I bet there’s already a plan to tweak this but thought I’d better mention just in case, as it spoils the nice new branding.
Thanks, Anonymous. We’ll follow this up.
Update
We’ve changed the text which appears in the browser title bar / tab.
Hello
I’ve had a quick look and have a couple of comments. First, I assume there is no browse function on this catalogue. I think a browse function (which can bring up an alphabetical list of authors, titles, etc.) has some important uses. Its absence is not a big problem here, so long as the old catalogue remains available (e.g. The British Library is planning to replace its current catalogue with ‘Explore’ and thus users will no longer have access to a browse function).
Second: maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I can’t understand how the refine search function does not seem to be able to distinguish between material types very well.
If I select Advanced Search, and then search for Author/Creator and fill in the field as “S. A. Smith”, I get 53,135 results. Now, under ‘Refine My Search’, I click the link that says ‘Books’. Now I have 2,978 results, do some refining has been done. But not very successfully. In the first 10 results, I count five books and five journal articles.
Thirdly, from my sluggish home connection, I notice that Explore wants a lot more bandwidth than the old catalogue.
Finally, although it is now no doubt too late to be worrying about it, I am a bit concerned about UCL spending money on a new catalogue system at a time when librarians are telling me that painful cuts to library budgets mean they cannot afford books and journal subscriptions which they acknowledge are of considerable academic value.
Sorry to be downbeat about it all, and I realize that the ‘refining’ function is the only thing that you might be able to actually do anything about — but it’s very important, given the numbers of results this sort of catalogue will give you even for quite specific searches.
Cheers, Simon (SSEES postgrad).
Hi Simon,
Thanks for your feedback.
1. There is a quasi browse function in the Advanced Search, using the ‘starts with’ operator in the second dropdown (example). The search defaults to ‘In the title’, and the results are pre-sorted by title. Obviously this is not a full OPAC-style browse function, but we will investigate if this function can be extended.
2. We have tried the Advanced Search for “S.A.Smith” using the ‘as author/creator’ option and ‘is (exact)’ as the operator, with no other limits, and get only 7 results – all books. Using operator ‘contains’ we get 3907 results. Filtering those by ‘Books’ in the Type filter gives 1258 results, 99% books as far as we checked. Could you try your search again, and maybe provide a screen shot of the search box and results so we can analyse them?
3. Explore is dealing with a much larger set of metadata than the Aleph OPAC does, and therefore unfortunately is more resource-hungry in order to provide a good response time for results. We will be monitoring efficiency over the coming months in order to find improvements.
Hi Robert
Thanks for your replies.
(1) Thanks for letting me know. That gives users something approximating a title browse, which is useful, although of greater value would be to be able to use it for author entries (which from an old-fashioned card-catalogue point of view is really the fundamental way of indexing a book collection).
The reason it is so important is basically because of inconsistent book cataloguing, whereby sometimes an author’s middle initial is included, sometimes their full middle name, sometimes just their first and last names. It is also very useful for titles that have been transliterated from other alphabets (e.g. books in Russian, of which UCL has a great number), because transliteration of author and title are not consistent (and alteranatives are often close by on an alphabetical list).
(2) I had not noticed the ‘Search Scope’ function at first. I have replicated the results you got by limiting to ‘All Library Resources’, which cuts out all articles except those hosted or indexed on UCL Discovery (and the filtering seems to work better for them, as you note). Setting it to ‘Library Catalogue’ will even cut out UCL Discovery results, which is useful when one is mostly or exclusively searching for books.
The results I reported were obtained with ‘Search Scope’ set to ‘All Resources’, which is likely to be what most users do initially, as it is the default option, and which gives you something of a torrent of results. In that case, even using the operator ‘is (exact)’ does not necessarily help.
To illustrate, try this search:
Author: is (exact): ‘S. A. Smith’ (this time with ‘Search Scope’ set as ‘All Resources’), and then refine for ‘Books’. Ok, so you now only have 9 results, and can easily find what you need. But you also discover that the article search cannot properly distinguish authors’ names. The first result I got was an article called ‘Gastrin in pancreatic tumors’, with the authors listed as: ‘Watson, S A ; Smith, A M’. I can see why the system thought that that article should match an author search for (exactly) ‘S. A. Smith’ — but it shouldn’t have…
I will send you screenshots if you let me know your email address.
Thanks,
Simon.
Thanks for this Simon and apologies for the delay in posting your reply. We’ll continue to investigate what you’ve described here.
Update:
“The first result I got was an article called ‘Gastrin in pancreatic tumors’, with the authors listed as: ‘Watson, S A ; Smith, A M’. I can see why the system thought that that article should match an author search for (exactly) ‘S. A. Smith’ — but it shouldn’t have…”
The suppliers now say that although the underlying search mechanism (Lucine) cannot be reconfigured, they will try to develop an author complete match boost (as there is for titles). This will be an enhancement, so will appear in a future update or version.
Hello,
I’m not sure if this is the type of feedback you want, but last week I ran a few checks using known UCL Discovery records to see the results and how they displayed.
1. I ran a basic search for ‘Albanian paradox’. There were perhaps too many results to be useful to a user, with no clear distinction between what they were – i.e. which results came from where/ went to what. Some of the results were not obviously related to my search. It was a bit like using the eprints basic search.
Although each record summary gives the publication type and whether or not it has full text availability, it might be nice to colour code the icons based on source (with a key somehwere). A user might like to see a full list of what is available without filtering by data source, but have a preference as to what they want to look at first. It is not easy to scan the results the way they currently display.
2. I ran a basic search for ‘development albanians’. Again the results seemed to be a little random. They included Abdülhamid II’s School for Tribes (1892–1907) and NATO Bombs Strike Chinese Embassy in Belgrade; War Crimes Tribunal Indicts Milosevic.
3. I’m not sure I am keen on the phrase ‘access may be restricted’ on metadata only results. Perhaps it is best to emphasise where full text is readily available, but not put a statement on metadata only records?
4. I notice that searches using the full text online filter gives results that say either ‘Online access’ and ‘Full text available’. Is this distinction made anywhere? Should there be a distinction?
5. I wonder if some of the filters/ filter headings could benefit from hover text that explains what the headings are. For example, people may not know what UCL Discovery is. There is no mention of UCL Discovery or other sources in the help text.
6. As the filters in the left hand column are quite long, and people will probably be looking at results when they are scrolling down the page, I wonder if it would help to show only the filter headings but with plus signs that can be clicked on to expand the list.
I hope this is of some use,
Erica
Thanks for your comments Erica. We’ll analyse the points you’ve made.
I’ve just done a search on one of my pet subjects in Explore and got a nice set of results so looking good so far. I also spelled it wrong so like the Google like “Did you mean” facility.
Just done a search and wanted to rank results oldest to newest but can’t so would recommend adding this if it is possible.
Thanks Anonymous. We are currently testing this functionality and will update you when it’s released.
I just tried to click on a link to full text and got kicked back to the Explore front page.
Thank you Anonymous. We will investigate and report this. Please report any further events like this.
Hello
Does Explore not list print journals when you do a general search of All Resources for a particular topic? There are plenty of full text articles and print books, but I can’t see any print journals unless I search specifically for a journal title rather than for a general topic. Is it meant to be like this or have I ticked the wrong box somewhere or something?
Thanks
Medwenna
Thanks Medwenna.
To test this we entered the search term gastroenterology using the search scope All Resources. Refining the 338,407 results by ‘Journals’ type reduced this to 77 results, in which were the print and online versions of ‘Gut’, the print journals ‘American journal of gastroenterology’ and ‘ Arquivos de gastroenterologia’. Admittedly the subject is also a title word in most of these, but we were looking for Gut in particular. Do you have any example searches which are not successful?
Would there be any value, do you think, in having an option for Journal titles in the “All resources” drop down menu? I know that you can limit by journal after doing a search, but I just wondered whether this would be worthwhile. I’d find it useful, but don’t know whether users would, or even if it’s possible.
When you refine a search using the facets, then in the resulting list open a ‘View n versions’ link, when you close the expanded versions you do not go back to your refined results, but to the full original unrefined results. This is v. annoying – can you do something about it?
Hi
I have a couple more examples where there is incomplete information on journals holdings, which I know about from their eUCLid records, but I cannot locate in ‘Explore’. (In order to find the records for these in ‘Explore’, I have limited my search to ‘Materials Type: Journals’).
1. European History Quarterly (1984 to present; 1999—avail. online).
eUCLid says: Holdings statement for Main: Vol. 20-40, 1990-2010. Plus Stores: Vol. 14-19, 1984-1989.
Explore displays no info on Stores Holdings, which implies that Main + SSEES holdings is all there is.
2. Acta Linguistica Hungarica. (1988—)
eUCLid: Holdings statements:
Site
Location Stores
STORE Pers S-5020
Holdings Vol. 51-57, 2004-2010
Site
Location Stores
STORE Pers S-3234
Holdings Vol. 38-50, 1988-2003
Site
Location SSEES
Periodicals
Holdings Vol. 58, 2011
Explore says (under ‘Locations’ tab):
Stores May be available.
Cheers,
Simon.
Thanks Simon,
I’ve had a look at the underlying Explore records, and there seem to be 2 separate problems here:
European history quarterly – no Store location in the list of holding libraries, so this is an Aleph-to-Explore transfer error
Acta Linguistica Hungarica – SSEES is in the list of holding libraries, but it is not displaying for some reason.
I’ll look more deeply into both and get back.
Issues with UCL Explore
• UCL Explore branding has been added to the browser title bar/tab only on the first page. It reverts to Primo on the search results page.
• Search box on the main page is not prominent enough.
• The list of things that it can search (“Use Explore to search for…”) is displayed very prominently, and look as though they should be links to specific searches.
• I’ve not been able to replicate the problem with ISBN searches not producing results, but it occurs to me that perhaps the problem is with 020z fields, that is, ISBNs that the system thinks are wrong.
• The system searches neither by barcode nor by classmark.
• It doesn’t appear to be searching the notes fields. For example, the text “from the collection of Moses Gaster” produces 443 results in eUCLid, all from the 561 provenance field. Searching the same text in quotes in Explore produces no results, and removing the quotes produces only 43 results.
• Clicking on the ILL link bounces the user back to eUCLid – is this how it’s eventually going to work, or is something else going to replace it?
• I’ve also been unable to find an option to suggest a book for purchase, which is presently found in the My Account section of eUCLid.
• An issue that I know I’ve flagged before with Keith, but the system currently doesn’t cope well with people who have multiple UCL accounts. If it’s not possible to separate the two accounts using the email log-in, might it simply be better to only have the library barcode and PIN as a log-in option?
• Can we add non-Roman character searching tools? It would be useful at SSEES, and I suspect it would also be very important for users working with the Hebrew and Jewish collections.
• Could we expand the list of languages available in the advanced search option? EUCLid currently offers 20, but Explore only has 3.
• Does Library Services plan to remove the existing public interfaces of the other databases that feed into Explore, or only eUCLid?
• Is there scope to add other databases to Explore at a later date?
• The number of hits produced is overwhelming. Given what our users are most likely to search, is “all resources” the most appropriate default setting?
• The number of search results differs wildly between the two interfaces. I suspect that it’s to do with the fact that Explore isn’t searching the notes fields at present. For examples, searching for Moses Gaster (no search operators or quotes) produces 560 results in eUCLid, but only 245 in Explore. A similar search for Jan Patocka in eUCLid produces 31 results, but searching Explore and selecting library catalogue as a search scope produces only 4 results.
• Does the system have stop terms built in? What are they?
• Can Boolean operators be set up to be case insensitive?
• When looking at an individual record, the subject headings are displayed as a link, which implies that clicking the link will find other records with the same subject heading. However, it appears to be running the search as a keyword search . Could this be set up to only search subject headings?
• Is there a way to search only for specific journal titles, rather than individual articles?
• Although search results can be filtered by resource type or by source (ie UCL Discovery records or library catalogue records), it would be useful to be able to sort all results according to type or source, rather than filtering them.
• Catalogue records only display in one format; there is no option to display them in other formats, such as citation or MARC tag format.
• Analytical entries are obscured because there is no option to display note fields. For example, a reader searching for the book “Istoriia ob Iosifie Prekrasnom prodannom svoimi bratiami” would not be able to see that it is bound with “Zhitie Averkiia episkopa ieropol’skago”, as the notes which include “bound with” and “spine title” are not visible.
Finally, a question which is not currently an issue but may be in the future. How will the online reading lists, which currently link to eUCLid, link into Explore? Will there be any potential problems moving from one to the other?
Books which are on order, in cataloguing or in processing show up in the results list as being out on loan. Though looking through to the location tab shows the status more accurately, the initial impression may be misleading for readers.
Further to my comment earlier today, having anything in the item process status field will make the book appear in the results list as being “out of library”, even when the book is actually on-site and could potentially be retrieved.
It was useful to read a compiled list of articles about condensed matter.Thank you for the work.
If I start a search using the default setting ‘All resources’ I retrieve far too many items. I then choose to ‘Refine my results’ on the left to show only Books but the results set contains mostly articles. The user can select ‘Available in the library’ under the ‘Show only’ section to focus in on books held within UCL libraries, but would anyone intuitively guess this?
The icons on the Explore front page are very useful as filters to change the default search from ‘All resources’. One problem is that the icons don’t come into play if people start their search at the library front page (rather than at the Explore front page). If someone goes to the library front page and enters a keyword into the search box, they effectively ‘hit’ Explore at the level of a results page, bypassing the Epxlore front page and missing out on all the nice functionality to be found there. I couldn’t find an easy link to the Explore front page from the Library front page. I had to do a search and then, once into Explore, click the home link at the top left.
It is quite difficult to spot that something has happened when you click the icons on the Explore front page. One suggestion could be, if the system allows for it, for some text to be added underneath the search box. The idea would be that the text would change when someone selects one of the icons (or if they change the source using the drop-down menu). So, if someone clicks the ‘Books’ icon, some text would appear underneath the search box to say “You are now searching the library catalogue” (or something similar).
I noticed recently that the mobile version of Explore had been branded as UCL Explore, but this now seems to have reverted to Primo branding? I understand that the mobile version will be looked at in more detail later on, but it would be worth adding a ‘health warning’ for now, so that users who follow the link from the Explore front page (which is quite prominent) do understand that it’s a work in progress and not really ready to use yet.
What does ‘sorted by relevance’ mean? If you search ‘parliamentary socialism miliband’ across all resources, the book ‘Parliamentary socialism : a study in the politics of labour / Ralph Miliband’ comes twelfth. This is surely the most relevant resource in the list!
Hi Kit,
Part of the problem is that Explore has a very different search engine to eUCLid or other library catalogues, in that it is dealing with millions of records from resources of all kinds, local and remote, not just library catalogue records (at least when using an All Resources search). From my understanding so far of the search engine configuration, the title, author and subject fields are boosted quite heavily, but possibly not in combination, ie the search for would not necessarily rank highly in any of those fields separately. However, separating off the title from the author as in < "parliamentary socialism" miliband> gives quite a different set of results, with our book at number 2 in the ranking. (The record at number 1 is a review article in which there is a reference to the book).
Obviously, another strategy would be to search using only the ‘Library Catalogue’ resource, or Refine the original query using the Type ‘UCL Books’. In either case the book would be the only record in the results.
This can also be done using the Advanced Search, using title and author . In this case there is also only one result, but without the need for any kind of pre- or post-filtering.
I hope this helps, but I will obviously continue to investigate relevance ranking and resource boosting, to see if we can get the search to respond more ‘intuitively’ to this kind of query.
If you look at the databases (by clicking the ‘Find Databases’ link in the top menu bar), those to which we are subscribed (eg Medline, Web of Knowledge) are marked ‘No access’.
SFX record in Explore – metadata error:
When you view the record for OGEL (Oil, Gas and Energy Law Intelligence) in the Primo frame within the search results, using “View Online” or “More”, it produces a “Sorry, no services found…” message in the SFX menu because the source metadata being sent to SFX is OGEL – Oil, Gas %26 Energy Law Intelligence. When you click “Get via SFX” in the details tab in the Primo search results, the correct full-text link appears. I presume this is something web-related to do with the % encoding – but then again, I could be completely wrong. I don’t think it’s related to the record in SFX.
There are a number of journals that have special instructions in the SFX menu. Urban Morphology and Museum Practice are examples. There’s probably not much that can be done about this, but users could be confused by the fact that the extra instructions in the SFX menu are hidden when you “view online” in the Primo frame in the results list. In the case of Museum Practice, it’s awkward because, unless you scroll down in the frame, you can end up clicking “go” without seeing the instructions about a special password being required (see second screenshot.) I wonder if we could solve this by reducing some of the blue top band in the SFX menu (though I know that might not be possible or desirable.) I don’t think we can rearrange the notes in the SFX menu so that the authentication note appears first (this affects how the SFX menu works in the ejournals list), but I’ll look into it at some stage if you think it’s worthwhile.
Do you think there’s any argument for renaming the “MetaLib” data source facet something more meaningful? I don’t know quite what to suggest – “UCL databases” may not be any more helpful, bearing in mind that that doesn’t establish that they’re specifically indexing databases – but I just wondered if this could be clearer.
Also, was “Expand My Results” renamed from “Expand beyond library collections”? The latter (or “Expand beyond UCL’s electronic collections”) makes more sense to me (given what’s actually happening is that the original search is of Primo Central limited to UCL’s SFX holdings, but that it’s being expanded to include all of Primo Central). Of course, we could have the content in print, hence the mention of electronic collections. What do others think?
Hi
I understand that users did not use the drop down list at the RH end of the search box
All resources
All Library resources
Library catalogue
Journal articles
Digital Collections
UCL Discovery
UCL Exam Papers
UCL Archives
UCL Journals
and the Explore home page now offers users, presumably still in ignorance of the full drop down list, a subset to click on of options in large size
Books
Journal articles
Digital resources and archives
UCL research publications
but unfortunately this has lost the distinction between UCL’s resources, and Explore resources.
Could we not preserve these important distinctions by having the original list on the Explore home page, but not as a drop down list, and have ‘i’ for information blobs at the end of each option, to explain the differences between the choices?
like this ???
All resources offered by Primo index
Journal articles offered by Primo index
UCL-all resources
UCL Library catalogue
UCL Journals
UCL Digital Collections
UCL Discovery
UCL Exam Papers
UCL Archives
This long visible list may help users choose an appropriate scope for their search and save them from drowning in over-long hit lists.
Ros Sweetman
Library Services
The form of an author’s name is significantly abbreviated on the author facet refine option on Primo. E.g. a search for “George Orwell” on a search on the “Library Catalogue” gives 611 results. The option to refine by author gives a number of options, all with a surname followed by a single initial. The top option is “Orwell, G (443)” rather then, say, “Orwell, George, 1903-1950”. The “Suggested new search” also gives some author options which begin “Orwell, G”. By contrast, the topic refine option gives “Orwell, George, 1903-1950”, as does the “Suggested new search” under topic.
The dates, expanded names, titles etc, are designed to be useful for helping a user distinguish between two difference authors, especially when we get to examples more along the lines of “Smith, John”. Tolkien is obviously a distinctive name but gives an idea of what has been left off: the full heading is “Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892-1973” but the refine option only has “Tolkien, J”. Another more practical example is a search for “Charles Dickens” for which there is an author refine option listed as “Dickens, C”. If you click on this you will get the works of the preacher “Dickens, Charles, 1719-1793” as well as the famous author “Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870”. As I knew the former’s books were older (18th c. sermons), I sorted by date and scrolled through to the oldest hits to find them. Surely it should be possible to do this refinement from the first results screen? The BL has full entries working by the looks of it.
Some comments on the display of certain fields and groups of fields:
245 [Title] $c [statement of responsibility] This records crucial relationship information between “authors” and the work itself, e.g. “edited by”, as well as lots of subsidiary information, e.g. prefaces, illustrations, “translated from the German” etc. It should be reinstated on the brief and full displays. I notice the BL have it displayed. It would need preceding punctuation to be added back in if it is present. I think the $n and $p display fine, which is good.
246 [Varying form of title]. This should display in the Full Details and, if possible, be further distinguished by the second indicator, e.g. 0 for “Cover title” and 8 for “Spine title” along the same lines as the 505. I can provide full details for this.
250 [Edition]. In the brief display this is curiously inserted between the 260$b and the 260$c, e.g. “London : Sage 6th ed.. c2011”. Could this be altered to something like “6th ed. London : Sage, c2011.”? (i.e. 250ab. 260abc.). In the full details, the edition doesn’t appear at all, and I think it should.
260 [Publication]. Explore seems to split this into two lines: Place ($a) and Publisher ($b) on one line, and data ($c) on another. I didn’t know if there was a particular reason for this (e.g. better fit with non-MARC records) but wondered whether it might be better to reunite them onto one line, perhaps prefaced by “Publication”, especially as this is how it appears on the brief record. This would condense things a little and still be readable (the BL have done this).
440/490/830. These are put in with Related Titles. I think they should be given a section of their own, prefaced by “Series:”. There are some subtleties in which fields are displayed here which I think I generally agree with how Explore does it: the 440 [transcribed plus authorised, now deprecated] is displayed, the 490 [transcribed] isn’t, and the 8xx’s [authorised] are. I think this makes sense although this raises questions about why we are transcribing the 490… Further, I noticed that when a field is repeated (e.g. two 830s), the contents are separated by a semicolon, but not when there are a variety of fields (e.g. an 800 followed by an 810). See the rather narcissistic and perhaps confusing but complete example: system no. 1186368.
The following uniform title fields are not displaying at all: 130 [Main uniform title, see: e.g. 946051], 240 [uniform title], and 730 [added entry uniform title]. The 740 [related title] also doesn’t show.
Subjects are not differentiated by scheme. E.g. 1454300 which has one LCSH heading (650 _0): Cancer—Textbooks and one MeSH heading (650 _2): Neoplasms. Ideally, these would be labelled separately as we had been trying to implement on Euclid and bring up appropriate results when clicked on. If done thoroughly, I imagine this has repercussions for resources outside the Euclid data as other subject/topic schemes exist? We have at least one more scheme (Source) to be taken care of within the cataloguing data.
Is it possible to change the ordering of information in the Full Details? As an example, I think the system no, although useful for staff purposes, should be relegated right to the bottom.
Dear all,
I have been trying to do a global search for DVDs on the UCL catalogue
In Euclid it was possible, though awkward, to dump the whole catalogue, filtered by VM, in groups of a thousand or less by year, and reassemble them into an Excel spreadsheet.
I can find no such data export facility in Explore.
However, I did find one interesting thing that may be useful for training purposes (according to Catherine Sharp). In trying to search for all items I originally left the search box blank and applied my filters – library catalogue and audio-visual. This produced no results. When inserting “” into the search box – meaningfully identical – I obtained my results.
As an additional note, it seems that audio materials are automatically ranked as more relevant than audio-visual materials. This would seem to be counterintuitive: and since most users would be looking for one or the other kind of resource, and there must be a way of filtering the resources since Explore ranks them non-randomly, it would be helpful to be able to apply this additional filter
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Simon Wigley.
Simon,
You are correct – there seems to be no bulk selection/save/mail from the results list in Explore. There is this facility on the eShelf, once you have added your chosen items, but getting your 5000+ records there in the first place could be tedious. We’ll query this with Ex Libris.
Thanks for the tip on using “” in the Advanced Search – we should add this to the help file and documentation.
It is odd that the Audio results come before Video using Relevance ranking: we will investigate that. Sorting by Title makes things better, and may suit your purposes as well.
Keith
Dear Sir/Madam
This is a query regarding the searching options in the new Explore interface.
It is possible to do a search by classmark in Explore?
Also, is it possible in Explore to browse the subject headings list? It is possible in eUCLid, but it does not seem so in Explore. I can see some SH in the suggested new searches, but do not know how to access the actual alphabetical list as I do in eUCLid.
Hi,
Currently it is not possible to search by classmark in Explore. We are working to implement this function as part of our ongoing configuration, as classmark searching is not part of the initial setup in Explore.
Browsing is not part of the design setup in Explore. There is a kind of quasi title browse in the Advanced Search screen (use ‘in the title’ and ‘starts with’ options), but this is limited to the start word(s) you use, and only works for titles. We have asked for an enhancement to extend this to authors as well, and subjects could be added to that request. But these will not be real browses as in eUCLid, as Explore is designed purely as a search and delivery system across many different types of resource, and browse indexes (eg a subject list) simply don’t exist in the system.
I hope this helps to explain the way Explore works. Please contact us if you have any further comments or questions.
Dear Laura,
We have now added a link to a new version of the book suggestion form under ‘More’ in the Explore menu bar and a second link in the Explore footer.
I’d like to suggest a book for purchase, which in the previous interface came up when a search failed to find anything. Now the facility seems unavailable – would be great if it could be reinstated.
I have already submitted these comments to the implementation team, but it was suggested I should post them here as well.
If Explore is to replace eUCLid completely, I am concerned about functionality that is available in eUCLid but not (currently) in Explore:
1. Browsing, especially for authors names; as has been pointed out by others this is particularly important for foreign authors who don’t have a name with standardised spelling
2. It is possible to see your previous searches via the e-shelf in Explore, but it’s very complicated (sign in + 3 clicks, and you need to know where to look). It’s much simpler in eUCLid.
3. You can do phrase searching in Explore if you know how (eg “second temple”), but it’s not spelt out as in the eUCLid “Words together” option (this could be solved by including some search hints on the page).
4. You can’t be as precise about limiting the search to a particular date in Explore as you can in eUCLid.
5. There aren’t as many hyperlinks in the bib record in Explore – title and imprint aren’t that useful but series can be.
Some general comments about Explore:
1. Would it be possible to add a link to COPAC in the bib record where there are links to Amazon and WorldCat?
2. If a book is unavailable it says ‘Sign in to see request options’. Could we make this a hyperlink to the login screen?
3. As others have said, the login screen is a bit confusing, asking for name rather than userid; the institution drop down box is also confusing. And does it need to have the MetaLib logo?
4. Could the ‘Send to’ option include more referencing software, eg Reference Manager?
5. I did a search for ‘flavius josephus thackeray’ in resource library catalogue. The top result says ‘Check holdings at Main’ rather than the usual ‘Available at’, I think because there are several volumes; however it gives a misleading classmark as not all the volumes are at that location, but you only find that out if you click on ‘locations’ and then ‘view all items’
Thanks for the detailed examples, Vanessa.
1 – author browsing.
a) Explore indexes the preferred and non-preferred terms from the LC names authority records on Aleph, as well as any variants within the bib record itself, so the results of a search should always show records from all those variations. Your example shows this, with the search ‘Shalom Aleichem’ bringing in results for ‘Sholem Aleichem’
b) The number of results in Explore differ because of the FRBR functionality grouping records together in Explore, eg:
Ale verk
Sholem Aleichem, 1859-1916.
New York : Sholem-Aleichem Folksfond Oysgabe 1927
Check holdings at Stores (STORE 01-05816 ) and other locations
>>> View 4 versions <<<
I haven’t actually counted up and added in all the versions in this result set, but generally any perceived shortfall compared to eUCLid is explained by this functionality. SSEES raised a similar issue with Russian names (Dostoyevsky being a favourite) which was explained by the same thing.
2 – previous searches
Agreed these are not as immediately apparent as in eUCLid, but we may be able to make them more accessible with a direct link. But there is no need to log in to see your current session’s queries, only if you want to see, for example, your searches from previous logged-in sessions. eUCLid does not offer historical previous searches at all, only for the current session.
3 – Phrase searching
The Help pages cover this and other search tactics:
Searching for a Phrase
To search for a phrase, type quotation marks around the phrase. You can combine both words and phrases in your search.
If you do not enclose the phrase with quotation marks, the system will find items that contain the individual words in the phrase, regardless of whether these words are located next to each other in the order specified.
Using quotes for phrase searching has been common for quite a time, so it’s not particularly arcane, but we could look at making it more visible on the search page.
4 – Refine by date
It is possible to drill down through the date ranges, like this:
3 Results for All resources Sorted by: Title
Refined by:
date: 1971 To 1985 date: 1977 To 1979
The best of Sholom Aleichem
Sholem Aleichem, 1859-1916. Irving Howe; Ruth R Wisse
London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson c1979
Available at Main (YIDDISH C 200 SHO )
Many other universities have found this restrictive, and the next version of Explore with have the facility for users to enter their own date range.
5 – Link from series line in full record.
Not sure if we can make this happen, but we will investigate.
Regarding your general comments:
1. We’ll certainly investigate adding COPAC to the Lonks section.
2. I’m not sure we can convert this message into a hyperlink but we’ll check
3. The login process shares the MetaLib authentication system so there’s not much we can do about the ‘branding’ of the dialog box. ‘Username’ is the terminology used by the main UCL single sign-on (Shibboleth) and also the Libnet authentication, but ‘Name’ could be maybe improved on.
4. This is coming.
5. Yes, Explore doesn’t offer an availability message when there are many items and/or volumes. The classmark display *is* misleading in this and other similar cases (it could at least say ‘and other locations’). We will ponder the usefulness of this message line overall.
Keith
Using Explore searching all resources using terms “Greek” & “Powell” gives 4,629 results, clicking on UCL books reduces this to 25 results
Using eUCLid quick search on terms Greek & Powell gives 32 results
Why the discrepancy?
Discrepancies in the number of results between eUCLid and Explore are almost always explained by the grouping of similar records together (FRBRising) in Explore (see previous posts on this). However, there are other issues with this particular search (27 versions of Dionysius Longinus, on the sublime?) which also need looking at.
Can you import article details easily into Reference manager 12?
Hello, in “My Account” “Fines and Fees!” (love the red exclamation mark!) it doesn’t show the total owing, only the individual cash transactions. Would it be possible to add the total somewhere?
Also, not essential, but the “transferred” column doesn’t mean anything to me, so I’m assuming this refers to something we don’t use in Aleph, maybe it can be hidden?
Thanks!
Rachel,
1. I will try to find the code for the fines total, and get it to display
2. The ‘Transferred’ column refers to transferring payment transactions to finance, which we don’t do. It’s hidden on eUCLid, so I’ll try to do the same on Explore.
Keith
Hello
I had a query about accessing ebooks from Explore. When I click ‘view online’ for a book, I get an error message from the UCL sign on box. When I click the ‘open source in a new window’ it’s fine and I can input my user id and password. Do you think it’s me and my computer?! The error message said it might be to do with not enabling cookies.
Also, re. ebooks, is it best to limit your search to library catalogue? I had trouble when I limited to online resources because there was so much…
Many thanks, Polly
Hello
I’ve just looked again and realised, that for ebooks, I should probably limit the search by UCL books or library catalogue rather than online resources. Is that right?
Thanks
Polly
Polly,
54. Some e-resources cause problems when opening inside the frame in Brief Results or Full View, so opening in a new window is definitely preferable. I have set up Explore so that e-resources do this automatically (you see an extra symbol after ‘View Online’), but I see that ebooks sometimes don’t do this for some reason. I am investigating this.
Do you mean accessing ebooks via Explore offsite (why do need to sign in)?
55. Yes, limiting your search to Library Catalogue, or filtering results by ‘UCL Books’, will stop you being flooded with results
Hi,
I have just bought the ebook Oral Infections and Cardiovascular Disease / Haheim, Lise Lund, which is accessible via eUCLid as expected, but not coming up on Explore. Could you please let me know if there is a problem with it?
Thanks,
Anna
Keith
Hello,
Looking for Marshall Berman’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air,if I click ‘View All Items’ from the Main Library copies of the Verso 1983 edition, it takes me to something called ‘One-step synthesis and assembly of one-dimensional parallel chains….’
Thanks,
Liz
Keith
Hello again,
I’m searching Explore for books by the Swedish artist, Mamma Andersson. We have three different catalogues, yet Explore retrieves two results, the first of which says ‘View 2 versions’. They are entirely different books.
This got me thinking and I tried a couple of different searches. It appears if I do a simple search for an artist’s name (which is what people will do), if the title of that book, exhibition catalogue etc. is the person’s name (there are millions of these in the Art collection), then Explore treats them as different versions of the same thing when in reality they are entirely different books.
e.g. a simple search for Jeff Koons in the Library Catalogue retrieves 24 results. The 3rd of these says ‘View 5 versions’. These are five different books with the title ‘Jeff Koons’.
Liz
Keith
Hello, I’m noticing a problem with missing journal locations. For several journals I’ve tried either the holdings statement for Science Library OR the classmark (e.g. ENGINEERING Pers) is missing. For example “Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers . Bridge engineering” on Aleph has holdings statements for both Stores and Science Library Engineering pers, but on Explore only the Stores link appears.
A few other examples:
Journal of mechanisms and robotics.
[online link appears, no reference to Science Library holdings]
Hydrology Research
[location listed as Science Library but no holdings statement or classmark]
Journal of Offshore Technology
[classmark listed as "NOT PUBLISHED"]
Water and environment journal
[location listed as Science Library but no holdings statement or classmark]
Electronic engineering design
[classmark missing]
These are just a few examples, it looks as though most of the print journals info on Explore is missing or incomplete. Is there anything that can be done to fix this before eUCLid is fully replaced?
Thanks,
Ruth
This problem is under active review and has been logged with Ex Libris. There is some kind of mismatch between our settings in eUCLid and those in Explore, which is leading to the print holdings for journals at some sites not displaying. We will have a fix for this before the changeover.
Keith
Hello,
I’m searching the Library Catalogue for Film history: an introduction by Bordwell and Thompson. The first record is the one I want, and we have three editions, correctly grouped under one heading, in three different libraries. When I view the three versions the option to refine by library seems to have removed the Main Library option. Am I doing somethig wrong?
Thanks,
Liz
Looking at the Locations of each of the 3 editions, they are all available at Main. I think the answer, therefore, is that it is not possible to refine the set further by sublibrary Main, but it is possible by Stores and SSEES. Hence those two appear in the list of refinements, and Main does not.
Keith
Hello,
I’m looking for theses, in particular Bartlett theses for a particular course – Facility and Environment Management. This was an easy thing to do in eUCLid – especially given the ability to search by classmark – however it’s more problematic in Explore. For example, a simple search in the library catalogue via Explore for ‘thesis bartlett’ yields 324 results. The same search in eUCLid gives 3111. Adding ‘facility’ to narrow the search gives 107 in eUCLid, but only 7 in Explore. The eUCLid results are what I’d expect, but I’m struggling to find a way of replicating the results in Explore.
The ability to see results oldest first would be useful in this context too, but I see that’s something you’re already working on.
In Explore, ‘bartlett’ is not a good search term, as the sublibrary is not a searchable field – the Library facet is used to refine by sublibrary (although in this case your theses are in both Bartlett and Store). Using the course title phrase “Facility and Environment Management” (from the 500 field) returns 69 results (70 in Aleph), while searching for the words ‘thesis facility management’ (from the 502 and 500) returns 108 results, comparable to your 107 in eUCLid. Let us know if you have any comments on this.
Thanks,
Keith
The RENEW BOOKS facility is not signposted, and is very hard to find even when in the ‘my account’ section. ‘Renew Books’ should be listed as one of the options.
We have tried to keep the navigation in Explore in line with that in our previous catalogue where possible, hence the Renewal links are in My Account/Loans as before. The layout is obviously different and we don’t have much control over that, but we’ll look at the possibility of introducing further navigation aids for renewals. Thanks for bringing this up.
Keith Lye
We seem to have lost the capacity to search for Icelandic letters. Normally you use ALT+208 and ALT+232. Problem! In addition, Icelandic isn’t listed among the searchable languages. Help!
I can’t seem to insert Alt+nnn characters into anything – how were you doing this?
Regarding searching for Icelandic records, this was not an option in eUCLid, either. If you want it added to the drop-down in Explore we can do so.
Keith
Hi, If you search for Spacecraft systems engineering by Fortescue Explore only returns results for an online copy. Yet when you click on locations it suggests there are 5 printed copies, which there are.
It displayed both versions separately before, as I used it as a sample search.Is there a reason for this, or am I missing something?
Vicky
The current display for this record is correct. ‘Identical’ print and electronic records are merged, using the electronic record as the preferred display. The presence of the ‘Locations’ tab is the indicator that print copies also exist. I don’t know why they were displayed separately in Explore before, except maybe some re-indexing could have made the change.
Keith
I think the problem lies in the fact that the initial results highlights online access in green, with no mention or indication that there are other versions. I think users would assume it’s only online. A couple of weeks ago the search results came back with 2 versions under the title. When you clicked on 2 versions, the print and e versions were displayed separately, as they would be for different print editions. This strikes me as much more user friendly.
Vicky,
We are working on adding to the ‘Online access’ text to make the presence of the print version more obvious. We hope this will be ready soon.
Keith
The line beginning “advanced search” that includes ILL and store request would be better at the top rather than the bottom of the page. In the same vein, could this “leave a reply” box be at the top of this page – it took ages to scroll down to find it.
Liz,
All those menu items are also included under the ‘More’ menu at the top of the screen.
Keith
A reader had been looking for “Life of St Columba”, trans. Sharpe and could’t find it on the shelf at the Celtic location. On clicking “locations” it appears there is another copy in Store, but she hadn’t spotted that. “Other locations” could well be interpreted as Senate House etc.
Liz,
The word ‘locations’ is intended to direct users to the Locations tab. We’ll look at making this more explicit.
Thanks,
Keith
On searching “Baer – Brazilian economy” in “library catalogue” it gives me the 4th edition. If I click “three versions” I find there is a 5th and also 6th edition. Why does the newest edition not come up first?
Liz,
We have fixed this. The brief results now make no reference to edition for FRBRised items, and when you click on ‘View 3 versions’ the items are listed in descending date (and hence edition) order.
Thanks for raising that,
Keith
Please can the list under More:-
Advanced search
Inter Library Loan
Store request
Ask for help
Suggest a purchase
+ the list at the bottom of Explore in alphabetical order rather than as shown:-
Advanced search Inter Library Loan Store request Book a study room Ask for help Suggest a purchase UCL Library Services Mobile
+ please can text be added to the Store request and Inter Library Loan to become Store request form and Inter Library Loan request form
Thanks
Hi, We have noticed that, in Explore’s print journal records, we cannot see information about missing print journal issues, or information about journal issues that have been sent to binding. (This type of information would be held in Field 866, subfield z in the catalogue record.) Are you able to get this information to display in Explore, or are there any plans to enable this in the future?
Many thanks,
Heather
Heather,
I have now enabled 866$z to display in the ‘Summary Holdings’ line under Locations, and Lacks and other notes should now display correctly. Thanks for spotting that.
Keith
It should be possible to have more than 10 results per page.
It should do a default sort to most recent to the top.
The sort by ‘relevance’ does not sort by relevance – quite what it uses is not clear.
When you select an individual library to search, the results should should that library’s books at the top.
Hi there, our Folklore Society collection is in UCL Wickford Stores. It’s more useful to me and to a lot of our members if they can browse the class mark shelf list. I hope you’re not intending to do away with Euclid-old catalogue as I can’t see an easy way of browsing a shelf list on Explore–if there is an easy way, please let me know so I can alert our Folklore Society members. Best wishes, Caroline
Is there a possibility of adding a link to Advanced Search in the front page of the UCL Library? I find “4 clicks” to advanced search a bit unnecessary and I think it’s an extremely vital function of the search engine.
Cheers
There are links to the Advanced Search in 2 places on the Explore front page – (1) in the ‘More’ dropdown in the top menu, and (2) in the links along the bottom of the page. So you should really only be 2 clicks from the Library home page, but we’ll see if anything can be done to make the path shorter.
Thanks,
Keith Lye
The Twitter feeds of all the sites used to appear on the Twitter feed pane. For some reason they have all gone apart from @UCLLibraries
Can you tell us why?
Dominic,
The original Twitter feed was from a Twitter list. Sadly, Twitter’s widget for lists has been discontinued and so no longer works when embedded into a web page.
The new feed is, as you say, the individual account for @UCLLibraries. This account follows all of our libraries and regularly retweets them meaning news from all our Twitter accounts will still appear embedded in Explore.
Regards,
Chris