Keyword Search (ranked)

A Keyword--all fields (ranked) search looks for words and phases located anywhere in a catalog record. A Ranked Keyword search may be useful when other search methods have not retrieved as much material as desired. This search is designed to retrieve the largest number of records possible, displaying them according to the system's evaluation of their relevance. Search limit can be used.

About Relevancy Ranking:

Keyword--all fields (ranked) search results are displayed in a Keyword--all fields (ranked) Title List in an order determined by a relevancy algorithm. Although relatively new to library online catalogs, relevancy ranking is used by many Web search engines (e.g., AltaVista, Lycos, etc.) However, each system’s formula for determining relevance is a little different. Here are some of the factors used in Minerva searches:

• Uniqueness of search terms within the database
• Proximity of search terms to each other within the catalog record
• Number of different search terms present in a catalog record
• Number of times a search term occurs in the catalog record fields (e.g., subject heading field, author field, title field).

Search Strategies:

Because the Keyword--all fields (ranked) search is set up to look for any of the words entered and because of the size of the University of Louisville's online catalog, Keyword--all fields (ranked) search results can be very imprecise. It is strongly recommended that special punctuation symbols be used to ensure more precise searching. The following symbols will improve your results:

quotation marks ( " ) surround exact phrases: "richard the lionheart"

+ indicates words that must appear: +medicine +alternative

* indicates important words: *renaissance

! indicates words that must not appear: buddhism !zen

? indicates word truncation: byzant? (searches for Byzantium, byzantine, etc.)

• Enter words or phrases in any order.
• All words will be searched including "and", "or", "not", "the", "a", "la", "das", etc. Boolean operators do not work in Keyword--all fields (ranked) searches.
• To improve the relevance of the results it is usually better to use more words or phrases in the search statement, as well as using the suggested punctuation tools.

Keyword--all fields (ranked) Examples:

Alternative Search Options: If specific information is known (e.g., an author, title, subject heading, etc.), it is usually better to use a search option from Basic Search or Advanced Search.

If a Keyword--all fields (ranked) search retrieves too many catalog records (a common problem with this kind of searching), try using a combination Keyword--all fields (ranked) and Subject search by following these steps:

• Within the Keyword--all fields (ranked) search box, type in words and/or phrases in any order.
• Review the results list and identify a relevant catalog record.
• Perform a new search using one of the relevant subject headings by selecting its hypertext link.

Keyword--all fields (ranked) searching should be used with caution for these reasons:

• The Minerva catalog is large (1.8 million records).
• It is very important to use punctuation, particularly the plus (+) to indicate that a word or phrase must appear in every record retrieved, to limit the size of the retrieval.
• Every additional word included in the search expands the results (that is, an implied Boolean "or" is in effect). This can result in a huge result set that may slow response time and be difficult to navigate.
• Words entered without quotation marks (") are searched as an "or" search.
• The total number of retrievable catalog records is limited to 10,000.
• The method the system uses to rank the relevance of materials is complex and may not always accord with the searcher's estimation of relevance.