Stephanie, thanks for asking the question. Our Director for Product Development has provided a reply.

Dan Robinson
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Thank you for the opportunity to join a discussion of the New WilsonWeb search system. I welcome the opportunity to clarify some misconceptions about the system, and to point out some very strong features of the New WilsonWeb search system.  I understand that the user experience is different from the old WilsonWeb, and thank you in advance for your patience while learning to adjust to the superior capabilities of the New WilsonWeb.  

On our Advanced Search screen the "ALL" search is not a simple keyword search for words anywhere in the record. Searching in "ALL" transparently creates a complex query that takes advantage of all of the indexing that Wilson's indexers have created. Our goal is to bring subject level searching to even the most inexperienced user. A word or phrase searched in "ALL" is first searched as a bound phrase in the subject field. If not found as a subject, the word or phrase is then automatically searched in the Wilson thesaurus. The Wilson proprietary search rules incorporate the knowledge that it is more important to find the requested term in the subject, or in the subject structure, than it is to find that word elsewhere in the record. If the word is found as a "use" reference in the thesaurus, the search automatically substitutes the correct subject heading into the search replacing the original term. Those records with the correct term as the subject are then automatically returned at the top of the results set, without any further action from the user required.
At the very bottom of the Wilson search rules hierarchy the words are searched anywhere in the document. Records that result from that bottom level search are returned only after all records that result from more relevant hits, (like those in subject). If those results with low-level relevancy are at the top of the results set, it means that the terms were not found in any more relevant place, like subject or as a "use for" term. We attempt to return some results that may be helpful. 
We are now aware that this search may be too broad for some users. We will be adjusting the algorithm for the bottom part of the "ALL" query to return only records in which all of the searched for terms occur, instead of the current behavior that returns records in which any of the terms occur. 
Remember that we now offer a Thesaurus function. This is also an excellent place to initiate a search. Note that should your search find no mention of your term in our thesaurus, we automatically conduct a keyword phrase search of all records, including full text articles, and return a list of the top ten subject headings that are most frequently used in the articles in which your term appears.
Please remember that the behavior described above occurs only in the "ALL" query on the Advanced Search screen. Selecting any other choice from the "as" drop down box creates a more standard, keyword search of a single field. 
Some users feel more comfortable with the keyword type of search. In order to better accommodate those users, we will soon be adding another choice to the "as" drop down box in the Advanced Search screen. A choice labeled "Keyword" will soon be added. Selecting this option will trigger a keyword search of all important fields of the record's citation. Until we are able to implement this enhancement, users may replicate this search by selecting individual fields such as abstract or title from the drop down box and using the "OR" operator to create a multi-field keyword search.

     
We hope to address any other concerns that you might have.  If you are experiencing a technical problem, please contact our Technical Support group at [log in to unmask]  You can also send us your Feedback from the link in the InfoCenter on the new interface.  

Regards,
Ron Miller
Director of Product Management
The H.W. Wilson Company
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-----Original Message-----
From: Stephanie Frontz [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 3:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ARLIS-L] wilson web


I've been trying to figure out the new interface for Art Index and Art Retrospective on Wilson Web and haven't been real happy with it.  I find that phrase searching on Advanced Search doesn't work--phrase searching only seems to work in Basic.  Has anyone else found this and other problems? 

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