What Analytics Tell Us about Facet Use

Abstract

One of the features of web-scale discovery tools is the ability to limit searches by facets or filters, metadata elements that are common across a result set, as an aid to the user for narrowing results. How much are they used, and in what circumstances? In this panel discussion three Ex Libris customers will talk about the way their interfaces record facet use and how they are used.

Angela Sidman (Yale University) will discuss Yale’s decision to pre-limit the article search results in their Blacklight discovery interface and what analytics tell us about how users interact with this default search setting.
Nicole Trujillo (University of Colorado) will discuss Boulder’s implementation of Google Tag Manager and how both GTM and OBI inform facet usage in different ways.
Ken Varnum (University of Michigan) will discuss facet use in U-M’s Library Search application, focusing on two search types: the article discovery tool, powered by the Summon API, and the Blacklight-powered catalog.

Attendees will learn how these three libraries’ facet usage differs, and what facet usage can tell us about user preferences.