The Narrow By Call Number Paradox

Based on some focus group data and anecdotal reference desk experience, it seems that one of the common ways that people use the library catalog is as a tool for finding a section of the library where they can browse for clusters of relevant books on their topic. The Endeca catalog has a feature that should, in theory, help people with this exact goal. You can do a keyword search, and then look at the call number breakdown above your search results to see which call numbers have the largest cluster(s) of hits.

The strange thing is that focus group data and anecdotal experiences also seem to indicate that users don’t understand what’s going on with the call number refinement as it currently exists. They do click on it. But they often can’t seem to articulate what it does or correctly differentiate it from the ‘Subject: Topic’ refinement on the left side of the screen.

So we (the Endeca Product Team) thought it couldn’t hurt to try tinkering with the label in hopes of clarifying this feature. We’d like to let users know that it can help them determine which floor (or floors) to go to in order to browse shelves for materials on their topic.

The old label was:
Narrow By Call Number Range

The new label we are trying is:
Browse By Call Number Location

We are not sure how to determine if this label change is helpful. If you have any thoughts about this label change, ideas for assessing its effectiveness, or suggestions for a better label, please let me know.

- Cindy