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August 22, 2007, 12:58 PM ET
Oklahoma Library Meets the BOSS
The BOSS, at Oklahoma State University’s library, is the Big Orange Search System. It’s an alternative online card catalog, one that shows users not just the university’s holdings but a constellation of related search terms, any one of which might lead a user to information gold.
The system uses a technology called “faceted search,” which features options to refine results and narrow things down. It also lets a user broaden a search using a “word cloud”: terms that surround the original search text and consist of associations, spelling variations, translations, and words a user has already tried.
Oklahoma’s colors tend toward the orange, hence the search engine’s nickname. That information, however, didn’t come up in a BOSS search when a user typed in “Big Orange.” It was on the university’s Web site, though. No search algorithm is perfect. —Josh Fischman
Categories: Libraries
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