What's In A Word? Rethinking Facet Headings in a Discovery Service

The emergence of discovery systems has been well received by libraries who have long been concerned with offering a smorgasbord of databases that require either individual searching of databases or the problematic use of federated searching. The ability to search across a wide array of subscribed and open-access information resources via a centralized index has opened up access for users to a library's wealth of information resources. This capability has been particularly praised for its "Google-like" search interface, thereby conforming to user expectations for information searching. Yet all discovery services also include facets as a search capability and thus provide faceted navigation that is a search feature for which Google is not particularly well suited. Discovery services thus provide a hybrid search interface. An examination of e-commerce sites clearly shows that faceted navigation is an integral part of their discovery systems. Many library OPACs also now are being developed with faceted navigation capabilities. However, the discovery services faceted structures suffer from a number of problems that inhibit their usefulness and their potential. This article examines several of these issues and offers suggestions for improving the discovery search interface. It also argues that vendors and libraries need to work together to more closely analyze the user experience of the discovery system.