Related:

NERS 8720 "Begins with" and "exact phrase" searching against any search field

Open for voting now.

Until this gets fixed, you can use HTML in the labels

> This has become even more important with the recently published option of using the
> starts-with-search for call numbers.

Yes, by now the tooltip is not accurate any longer.

> elementary user experience stuff that just needs to be fixed

Fully agree.

Any update on this? The tooltip that was under review (in 2022) is now in place, as many others have commented, but it never addressed the idea that was raised back in 2017 - over six years ago.

Jesse Kruppa's comment from March 2023 explains in great detail why this behavior is broken for users.

This is pretty elementary user experience stuff that just needs to be fixed.

Glad to see that this is under review.

Tooltips don't work for mobile.

> if we won't display this search operator at all for the other fields, the user will
> not know that this search option is possible

I would prefer that to how it is now.

I consider this a bug and not a feature request.

I'm really struggling with how to explain to our patrons what the different options in advanced search are, also somehow explaining that not all options work for all fields - and all of this in the label that they see in the pulldown list of options.

search-advanced.precisionOperator.option.equalsPhrase

search-advanced.precisionOperator.option.exact

search-advanced.precisionOperator.option.startswith

If "starts with" must be displayed even when it is not applicable, then it should be grayed out if another field has already been selected. As it currently works, it is extremely confusing and leads to empty results when users think they are searching by author, for example, but it switched to title when they selected "starts with." The tooltip is not noticed and does not resolve the confusion.

This has become even more important with the recently published option of using the starts-with-search for call numbers. The idea of including a tooltip is helpful, but it still leads users to a dead end. It would be even more helpful if one could only select the starts-with search for title and call number and not find it at all for other options. There was also a NERS request (ID 8273 in spring 2023) on this topic. Could you please reconsider working on this?

> Our Library (University of Macau Library) would like to add "starts with" in subject search.

I think you should open a new idea for this and link to it from here.

So by now the tooltips exist. They really are not a solution in my opinion.

- mobile doesn't have tooltips
- if I activate 'starts with - call number' I have to either adapt the tooltip or suppress it

(Same problem for the tooltips for the new 'is exact phrase' search).

This is not an enhancement. This is a request for Primo to follow UX design guidelines.

Current implementation suggests to users that they can search "Any field" that "Starts with" their search term.

They cannot. This confuses and frustrates them. To make matters worse, the dropdown behavior is inconsistent (also a cause of complaint):

Selecting "Starts with" in the Search Type disables everything but Title and Holdings Call Number (if configured) in the Field Selector. The Field Selector removes the disabled options from view.

For the sake of consistency, selecting anything other than Title and Holdings Call Number ought to disable "Starts with" and remove it from view.

Behavior should be consistent: Either disabled items are removed from view in both dropdowns, or they are not removed from view in either dropdown.

If the disabled items are not removed from view, then they need to be obviously inactive.

UX design guidelines suggest to gray out any incompatible options and, optionally, ALSO display a tool tip explaining why the option is gray.

https://www.justinmind.com/blog/drop-down-list-design/#:~:text=What%20do%20we,with%20their%20mouse!

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/drop-down-menus/#:~:text=Gray%20out%20any,make%20it%20active.

For example: Books with subject heading that begins with "Law" generally discuss laws in a general and collective way, while "Obligations (Law)", "Civil law", "Press law", "Radio--Law and legislation" and so on discuss various laws individually. LCSH has thousands of subject headings that contain the word "law", i.e. if search criteria is set as Subject "is (exact)" in Primo VE, then the result will presumably include large number of materials that readers actually do not want. On March 24, 2023, a try was done with the same criteria and found a total of 1,650 materials. Taking the first 20 results as an example, only 6 bibs. are with subject headings that begin with the word "Law", i.e. the desirable hit rate is only 30%.

Actually the above case occurs in hundreds of LCSH, e.g. "Disabilities", "Finance", "Artists" and " Criticism".

Comparing with Title or Keyword search, the advantage of Subject search is high accuracy of results. However, Primo VE does not provide "Starts with" of Subject search, this greatly weakens its accuracy and on the other hand increases the burden of readers' screening. These days, we are facing a problem of too much information and therefore providing readers with accurate information is the most effective way to help them finding information.

We support to have the search option "Starts with" in the subjects search and other fields like notes fields, publishing fields, and etc.

Our Library (University of Macau Library) would like to add "starts with" in subject search.

NERS 8273, open for voting now.

> And I don't think a tooltip would contribute much to a better user experience.

I agree.
Tooltips are not visible on mobile.

Also, the tooltip seems to have been rolled out by now, but only in English, and I don't remember having seen any information about it?

Agreed! The current behaviour is very strange and not user friendly. And I don't think a tooltip would contribute much to a better user experience. Functions should only be displayed where they can be used, and it's confusing that Primo VE just changes the field selector when you choose the search type "starts with".

By autumn 2023 also 'Starts with – Holding call number' should become possible (NERS 7986).

> the default search is usually done on the "Any" field

I don't agree: patrons who only need the "Any" field have no reason to switch to advanced search.

Patrons who take the step to advanced search are looking for something they couldn't find with a search in the "Any" field.

> We are considering adding a tooltip to the "Starts with" search operator,
> rather than displaying it only for the "Title" field.
> The tooltip will explain that this search option is available only for the "Title"
> field.

This seems like a strange way of "solving" this to me, not least because tooltips are not visible on mobile.

We already use the workaround of rephrasing the label to inform our patrons about this.

'Starts with' should only be visible when it actually can be used.