FAQ

What are the features of the new library catalog?

The new catalog:

• Is a union catalog and allows easy searching and requesting of other UW System items
• Does not time out (MadCat timed out after 15 minutes)
• Will not limit the number of results displayed (MadCat limited to 10,000 results)
• Provides additional information from "Freebase", adding informational value to search results
• Allows limiting to specific collections within libraries (MadCat limited to the library level only)
• Uses initial articles to inform relevancy in title searches (MadCat required elimination of initial articles)
• Provides easy perma-linking directly from the browser's navigation bar

How does searching work?

There are several rules that apply to searches:

• Boosts or weights are applied at query time to different fields
• The more a search term appears in a document, the higher the score
• Matches on rarer terms count more than matches on common terms
• If there are multiple terms in a search query, the more terms that match, the higher the score
• Searchers may explicitly boost the contribution of one part of a query over another (by using the + next to a term)
• For Words Anywhere searches, search terms that appear in an item's title will boost its relevance