Vocabulary-Assisted Searching
Sue McKeown, Open SiteSearch Documentation

In version 4.1.0, vocabulary-assisted searching allows you to use a controlled vocabulary to improve the recall (finding more information) and precision (finding the most relevant information) of patrons' single-database searches. WebZ dynamically builds a list of related terms (the controlled vocabulary) for a search term entered by the patron from a: Thesaurus database associated with the target database               and/or Sample result set from the target database For databases associated with thesauri, WebZ builds a term list from the target database if the patron's search term does not exist in the associated thesaurus database. The term list includes check boxes that allow the patron to select one or terms to search the target database. The terms have links to a thesaurus tree if the target database is associated with a thesaurus database and the patron's term exists in the thesaurus. The thesaurus tree shows a term with respect to broader, narrower, and related terms in the thesaurus. Term list and thesaurus tree displays use the rules-based formatting introduced in version 4.1. In the 4.1.0 release, four databases are associated with thesauri on the SiteSearch demo site for illustrative purposes (ERIC, Medline, PsycInfo, and WorldCat). Numerous other catalog and citation databases demonstrate creation of term lists from the database itself in the release as well. You must obtain a license for each thesaurus you wish to use, as you do for other databases. Since thesauri are stored in databases, you need to configure a thesaurus database as you would any other database. Database configuration files have a new [TermFinder] section for configuring term lists generated from sample result sets.

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