Charge
Indexing Features to Pathfinder Task Force
UCB Library

Dear Colleagues:

Thank you very much for agreeing to serve on a task force to look at the need for "indexing" features in Pathfinder. Since the recommendations of the Pathfinder II Task Force, there have been some additional suggestions for adding indexing features. Ralph Moon, Head of Systems, has asked that we discuss the list of "indexing" features and prioritize them for the Public Services Council and for Systems so that they can begin working on implementation.

The list below is only a partial one, and I think at your first meeting you might discuss additional items that you would like to add to it. The group should not need more than a few meetings to discuss and prioritize the list. It would be helpful to have a prioritized list by the end of April 2001.

Thank you to Allan Urbanic for agreeing to serve as Chair.

Members include:

• Allan Urbanic (chair)
• Janet Garey
• Aija Kanberg
• Corliss Lee
• Lee Leighton (ex officio)
• Lorelie Mansur
• Ralph Moon (ex officio)
• Cathy Moreno
• John Roberts
• Cathy Scheiman

Many thanks for your willingness to assist on this project.

(list below is an excerpt from the Pathfinder II Task Force Recommendations):

2. Proposals for new or improved search indexes to increase accuracy of searches and reduce the too many hits problem:

Please note that the proposals in this section would not be part of the initial public release of Pathfinder II. If approved, they will be scheduled for later implementation in consultation with public services for the most appropriate timing.

1. Relators, which describe the roles of personal, corporate, and conference authors and names. An example would be a personal author such as Benjamin Britten who could be a composer, conductor, performer, or an associated name or collector. If we had an index of relators, it could be possible to do a search for personal author: Britten, Benjamin and role: conductor. Other considerations for relators are the possibilities for sorting search results by these roles and how to display them.
2. Personal and corporate author indexes: Reindex so that authors as subjects are no longer included. When searching for an author as a subject, users would perform a subject search rather than an author search.
3. Simple author index: An additional author index of main authors only, which would exclude other authors and added entries.
4. Simple title index: An additional title index which does not include series, uniform titles, or added/other titles.
5. Uniform title phrase index: Reindex to treat uniform title phrases like subject phrases, linking all the subfields together when searching rather than allowing subfields to be searched individually.
6. Arabic and Hebrew titles and names: Research possible solutions to the problem of better handling the varying ways in which articles are treated in these languages so that search results can be made more accurate and complete.

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