Thursday, April 23, 2009
EBSCO SmartText Searching - GALILEO response
I heard back from GALILEO regarding my previous post. Yes, the automatic switch to SmartText Searching is a new feature in the EBSCOHost databases. Some of us at Clarkston have concerns about this more Google-like search which may retrieve hundreds of thousands of results. The automatic switch occurs when a boolean search retrieves zero results. Our students have enough trouble selecting good articles without having the results multiplied and diluted. I've confirmed with Tessa that this feature can be turned off at individual institutions, so perhaps we should discuss this at our various libraries and then the Reference Committee can decide whether to turn the default off. I think we would still be able to use SmartText Searching (it's an option below the "boolean/phrase" default on the EBSCO search page) but it would not automatically switch.
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