AN EVALUATION OF AUTOMATIC QUERY EXPANSION IN AN ONLINE LIBRARY CATALOGUE
Micheline Hancock‐Beaulieu, Stephen Walker · Journal of Documentation · 1992
An automatic query expansion (AQE) facility in an online catalogue was evaluated in an operational library setting. The Okapi experimental system had other features including: ranked output ‘best match’ keyword searching, automatic stemming, spelling normalisation and cross referencing as well as relevance feedback. A combination of transaction log analysis, search replays, questionnaires and interviews was used for data collection. Findings show that contrary to previous results, AQE was beneficial in a substantial number of searches. User intentions, the effectiveness of the ‘best match’ search and user interaction were identified as the main factors affecting the take‐up of the query expansion facility.