Information Services Advisory Group
Responses to Search Interface
Ovid Technologies, Inc.
This review is designed to provide a summary and synthesis of evaluations
by members of ISAG of the interface developed by OVID Technologies, Inc.
After a brief statement of general observations drawn from the evaluations
as a group, the comments are organized in several general categories;
positive and negative comments reflecting mutliple reviewers are listed
first, followed by significant observations by individual reviewers.
The individual comments were selected because they addressed significant
points not raised by others, provided useful examples or details, or added
balance to differing perspectives.
General trends in evaluations of OVID
- Favorable comments on clarity and ease of use in OVID interface
- Criticism of search engine, limitations of keyword searching
- Generally favorable comments on display and capture of search results
ISAG members’ overall comparison of OVID interface to WebSPIRS interface:
| Preferred Ovid: | 1 |
| Preferred WebSPIRS/Silver Platter: | 2 |
| No clear preference indicated: | 4 |
Appearance of Interface
Positive comments:
- Most reviewers noted the clarity and/or simplicity of interface.
- Nice appearance, good use of white space, omission of distracting OVID logos, etc.
Critical comments:
- Several reviewers criticized on the Choose Databases screen -- either the lack of
alphabetical or other orderly arrangement, or the lack of description of what some
acronyms or names represented.
Additional individual comments:
- Put the Citations Manager at the top of the screen, rather than lower, requiring the
user to scroll down.
- Put the Search box above the Search History chart, also to avoid the need to scroll
down (before running additional searches).
- OVID fails to inform user that search results were visible below, suggesting
that it was necessary to click the Display link to view results, when it was not.
- One reviewer did not like the capitalization of some parts of the Titles display.
- The clarity of OVID’s screens was almost deceptive: "Nothing is emphasized" and
"everything appears to be of equal importance."
Navigation
Positive comments:
- Most reviewers found navigation generally easy.
- Such buttons as Main Search page, Next Citation, Previous Citation
were helpful and their function was clear.
Critical comments:
- Distinction between "Basic" and "Advanced" was not particularly clear.
- Some reviewers found the meaning of icons (e.g., Combine) unclear.
Individual comments:
- Provide more flexibility in navigating at various points in an OVID session,
and provide icons at the top and bottom of more screens.
- One reviewer noted occasionally being directed to an incorrect screen, but
suggested that this could have been a Web problem rather than a problem with OVID.
Search Engine
Most of the comments were critical with respect to searching on OVID.
Critical comments:
- User is not informed about how to run keyword searches, or which fields will
be searched when a keyword search is run.
- Several of us noted difficulties limiting particular terms to certain fields,
notably the author [au] field; method for doing this not explained, and constructing
such searches on OVID using the suffixes or delimiters is probably too complex for
most users to take advantage of more powerful searches.
- While icons leading, e.g., to Author or Journal Name are useful, the multi-step
process -- first obtaining a list of index entries, then running a search after a
listed name is selected -- is a drawback, especially when the results must then be
combined with one or more other sets of results.
Individual comments:
- The Map Term to Subject Heading option should not be automatically checked.
- One reviewer doubted that most users would understand or use such features
as "mapping" subject headings and "exploding" subject headings.
- Search Terms feature would be more useful if it allowed more than one term to
be searched, and in different fields.
- Information about truncation should appear on the search screen.
- Basic mode was better for Author/Keyword combination searches than the Advanced mode.
- Limitation options in Keyword searching are a good feature, and more extensive
limitation options should be provided, with pull-down menus, at least for some categories.
- There is plenty of Help information available, and that it was easy to find.
- "Limit" screen should "allow one to limit by classification code" on ABI/Inform.
Display and capture of results
Comments on the display of results (citations) was generally positive.
Individual comments:
- Helpfulness of hypertext author names in citations displays.
- Electronic mailing of search results worked well.
- Citation plus Abstract or Complete Record displays were useful, but Citation
alone provided little more than Titles display.
- One reviewer questioned the display of local call numbers in OVID’s WorldCat database.
Review prepared and respectfully submitted by David Bachman, April 10, 1997.
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