Utility of a faceted catalog for scholarly research

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to determine whether a faceted OPAC interface offers improvements to information discovery in scholarly research. Design/methodology/approach - The 5.2 million records of an entire library catalog were loaded into a faceted navigation interface and an attractive search term suggestion tool. Humanities PhD students at the dissertation level and familiar with this collection were observed while using this interface to continue their research into the literature on their dissertation topic. Findings - From a group of 12 subjects, nine reported finding materials that they had not found in their previous use of the traditional catalog interface. Research limitations/implications - No attempt is made to isolate the effects of relevance ranking on discovery from those of faceted navigation or the search term suggestions. The differences between the circumstances of scholars who did and did not find previously undiscovered materials are not examined. Practical implications - Faceted interface and search term suggestion in a library catalog may enable those scholars who are highly dependent on library materials to find materials that would remain hidden in a traditional library catalog. Originality/value - This article considers whether faceted navigation increases the range of relevant materials that scholars discover, and is of interest to libraries which are considering adding faceted navigation and other features to their catalog interface.