Thursday, June 24, 2010

Enhanced Wildcard Searching

We showed you last year how to use asterisks to perform wildcard searches in Encore. However, that feature requires you to have at least 2 other characters in the search query- so you couldn't just search for * and see your entire collection displayed in the results.

To work around this issue, we've added the three character OCLC library code for Denver Public Schools ("DPU") to every bib record in the catalog. Now if you search for "DPU" from your school's scoped page, every book in your collection will display in the results- or if you search for "DPU" from the home page in LION, every book in the entire district will display in the results.

Here are some examples of uses for this new functionality:

  • Let's say you have a new student that recently moved to Denver from Moscow. If you search for DPU and then refine the results using the "Language" facet to Russian, you will be able to see every book in DPS written in the student's native language.

  • Perhaps you have a teacher at your school frantically looking for a DVD to show their class because they waited too long to order from the Video Film Library. If you search from your scoped page for DPU and then refine to "DVD" in the Format facet, you can quickly show them every DVD in your collection.

  • Searching for DPU and then using the "Publish Date" facet could quickly help you find the oldest books in your collection that potentially need to be weeded.

  • If you have a student looking for a good book to read, searching for DPU and refining your results to "Reviewed Book" in the format facet will display every book in your collection that has a published review written by a DPS librarian.


If you have any other suggestions for uses of this feature you would like to share, leave a message in the comments section or send an email to the helpdesk.