I looked at a year's worth of search log data for the Guggenheim
collection on-line last fall (as a pilot study for some work within
the steve.museum project). I was surprised at how few studies there
were of museum search logs, and how little our community 'knows'
about what people really do on our sites.
Guggenheim splits searching between the entire site (including the
collection) and just the collection. But it's clear from what people
search [e.g. 'jobs'] that the collection only distinction isn't
apparent for all users.
The paper's on-line at
http://conference.archimuse.com/blog/jtrant/searching_museum_collections_on_line_what_do_peo
-- liked to a blog post that highlights some other findings,
including a really surprising one: people can't spell or type...
"spelling errors accounted for 36% of unsuccessful searches, but half
(50%) of the unsuccessful artist's name searches failed because of a
spelling error." Any new catalogue should take this into account.
jennifer
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J. Trant [log in to unmask]
Partner & Principal Consultant phone: +1 416 691 2516
Archives & Museum Informatics fax: +1 416 352 6025
158 Lee Ave, Toronto
Ontario M4E 2P3 Canada http://www.archimuse.com
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