Search all fields / review improvements
I've made improvements to two areas—searching and reviews.
Searching all fields. I admit it: the old searching capabilities were weak. The new ones are better, but not perfect. Under the Search tab you'll now see two options, "Search titles/authors" and "Search all fields." The former is the old, lame search. The latter is the new "all fields" search.
All fields means: title, author and other authors, ISBN, date, publication, LC call number, Dewey, series, BCID, "summary," comments and review.
When you do the new search LibraryThing will take a moment to prepare. If you have only a few hundred books, you may not see or only briefly glimpse the flip-flopping killer whale (at right, in case you missed it). In theory, you won't see the whale again unless you add a bunch more books. In fact, I will probably be clearing out the searching cache as I make improvements and get the bugs out.
Some drawbacks:
There was some feedback on the Google Group from users who liked the old one better. I much prefer the new one, but I'm open to some combination of the new and the old. Or I could just keep the old around, but that strikes me as wiggly.
Searching all fields. I admit it: the old searching capabilities were weak. The new ones are better, but not perfect. Under the Search tab you'll now see two options, "Search titles/authors" and "Search all fields." The former is the old, lame search. The latter is the new "all fields" search.
All fields means: title, author and other authors, ISBN, date, publication, LC call number, Dewey, series, BCID, "summary," comments and review.
When you do the new search LibraryThing will take a moment to prepare. If you have only a few hundred books, you may not see or only briefly glimpse the flip-flopping killer whale (at right, in case you missed it). In theory, you won't see the whale again unless you add a bunch more books. In fact, I will probably be clearing out the searching cache as I make improvements and get the bugs out.Some drawbacks:
- The "all fields" does not include tags, which has its own search function.
- There remains no "advanced" search, where you could choose which fields to search. This will have to wait on anticipated server and database improvements; even though it has more books than all but 100 libraries in the US, LibraryThing still runs on essentially one $2,500 server. (There's a lesson in here about library IT costs.)
- The "search library" link in the catalog does not yet include the feature. I am thinking that "all fields" will not be the default, with perhaps a checkbox to search just titles and authors. But I want to monitor resource usage before I do that.
There was some feedback on the Google Group from users who liked the old one better. I much prefer the new one, but I'm open to some combination of the new and the old. Or I could just keep the old around, but that strikes me as wiggly.
posted by Tim at 9:43 AM
13 Comments:
I just tried the "all fields" search and it was actually quite speedy. And I've seen worse animated gifs!
As one of those who had some reservations about the new Reviews page, I think it is incumbent upon me to say that it is growing on me.
It works quite quickly for me too, but one thing that you might want to consider:
If I search the term "apple" and then select a book from the list to edit, I end up back at the catalog proper, and not the apple list. So I have to go through the search process again.
Frustrating, but (I hope) easily addressed
Ah. Good catch. I can gues what the problem is. I'll look at it.
I don't really mind the new reviews page. But if you're looking for a somewhere in between compromise, maybe something along the lines of what happens on the reccomendations page when you click "why?" So initially you'd just be looking at the lists, with titles, but could expand them to show the text of the reviews.
I like the new Reviews page, it's a real improvement.
Reviews: would it be difficult to have a button to 'collapse' the reviews to 'show title only'?
Whatever else you do, please keep at least the new chronological ordering standard on reviews! For, ahem, prolific reviewers - it's priceless.
Personally, I like the updated reviews page, but a collapsible function could be nice.
I haven't used the improved search yet today, but I'm really pleased to see it. Any and all improvements in that area most welcome. :)
Thank you Tim!!!!!! I'm thrilled by the new search. Not to be persnickity, but are you considering a future modification that would allow a search by all fields including tags, or ruling that out? (I ask only because the answer will affect my tagging practices.) Thanks again, this is a huge improvement either way.
While you're changing search methods, is there any plan to make the functionality of the "search LibraryThing/search tags" and the "search your library/search tags" more parallel? I do understand what it's doing now with substring vs. string matching on simples searches and why (we had a discussion on Google Groups about this), but I'd like to be able to do the same sort of multiple-tag searches on other libraries that I can on my own. For instance, I have several books in my library tagged with both "fantasy" and "baseball", but I have no way of finding out whether anyone else uses this combination of tags, and which books they're thus tagging! I don't think I'm the only person who'd like to peruse all of LT for idiosyncratic combinations of tags.
Patchen: I'm not sure, frankly, but I'll put it on the "possible" list. I'm intrigued; how does your tagging hinge on it?
Lorax: This one will have to wait for more database power. When you search for something common, like "fiction" the resultant tag page isn't "rebuilt" every time. Each of the elements--tag cloud, recently-tagged books cloud, etc.--is on a different update schedule. Without that something like "fiction" could take 20 seconds to load. This would get MUCH worse if you asked for fiction AND poetry, where I couldn't cache all the possibilities (10,000 to the Nth power?), and the amount of data to crunch would be large. It MIGHT be possible to deliver something smaller, however--just the books tagged with both tags, without related tags, related subjects, etc. etc.
Paul: "Speaking of which, now that this is so well developed and so advanced... any reason to keep the 'beta' tag in the name? This is a better package that 90% of the 'live' software out there of any shape, size, flavor, or purpose." Thanks. We're trying. I think it falls short in some ways, but the social dimension makes up for it. (The fact that it's on the web is also a big plus, so long as you have an always-on connection.)
I'm not sure about getting rid of the beta. After all, there are a lot of bugs, and I also reserve the right to basically change anything at anytime. "Beta" puts people on notice to that...
Pam: You're right, there are problems with ISBNs. As a result, LibraryThing underlying data structure is NOT based on them. I suspect that I'll code it so that if you provide an ISBN that goes to two "works," it will take you to the more popular one.
Hi, Tim. I'm Robert, the guy with the LiveJournal criticisms. I've been using that account you gave me today (now that my cuecat has arrived in the mail), and I have to admit LT's importing+editing flexibility is really striking and is making me rethink whether or not LT is the right fit for me. Seriously, if you give me separate "catalogs" (or shelves, or whatever the metaphore) then you've got my $25.
BUG REPORT: Using the "-tagname" syntax in the tag search does not return fields without any tags at all.
Steps I take to reproduce it: On a new account, import some isbns from a text file and add them to the queue. When they are all added, tag them all as "batch1". Import a different set of isbns from a text file, but do not add any tags. Wait for the queue to empty. Now search for -batch1. The search will be empty.
It affects how rigorously I tag books with the names of their authors. I've been doing this with some authors -- those whom I know are also the subjects of large amounts of secondary literature in my library, e.g. Hegel. -- but not with all. Suppose a Festschrift is published honoring an author who's not currently also a tag. If I can search all fields including tags in one search, I might tag the Festschrift with the author's name without going back and tagging all his books with his name too, because I know I can see all books by him *and* about him in one stroke. But if tags can't be searched with the other fields, I'd be more inclined to tag his books with his name too.
Although I'm not sure about this I am inclined to prefer the first strategy, and if tags were included in the all-fields search I might even go back and remove the tag "hegel" from Hegel's books, partly as a time and space-saving strategy, and partly because this would mean that the tag would then provide unique information -- all books about Hegel but not by him. But I wouldn't do this unless I could get the conjunction through a single search.
Does that make any sense? Thanks!
When I decided to go back and add some information to the "comments" field for books that had been autographed/signed, I was thrilled that I could search for my signed books using the "all fields search." This is a bibliophile's dream ... and the price is right! The hamster is a minor intrusion.
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