Post Az00upIISQ3x6gSWkS by emmadavidson@aus.social
 (DIR) More posts by emmadavidson@aus.social
 (DIR) Post #Az00Cnn4gcZ1hZrYhc by overholt@glammr.us
       2025-10-08T12:23:11Z
       
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       I am, there's no other word for it, haunted by people who email us to say "I've been trying to find something in your online catalog that I know you have, with no luck," and then I copy and paste their search term and it's like the second result. I just so badly want to know what they were doing that didn't work. There's just no way to press that without it feeling like shaming.
       
 (DIR) Post #Az00upIISQ3x6gSWkS by emmadavidson@aus.social
       2025-10-08T12:31:04Z
       
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       @overholt if it’s happening with any regularity, it might be worth talking to IT support. Maybe there genuinely is something different about how they’re using the search function, and the product owners for the online catalog can fix it so that it’s more reliable?
       
 (DIR) Post #Az01JFrlJa1YT6hEDw by platypus@glammr.us
       2025-10-08T12:35:33Z
       
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       @overholt as the product owner for the catalog I can sometimes frame it as “we want to see if things aren’t working correctly” but … yeah, it’s mostly gonna be helping them build skills
       
 (DIR) Post #Az01RnUiAaVD55zIsS by dazzlepansy@glammr.us
       2025-10-08T12:37:04Z
       
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       @overholt Technical and information literacy are easy to take for granted but we have to keep reminding ourselves are not as common as we think. It's frustrating and bewildering and haunting, but we have to do it to help patrons.I used to be a computer programmer. It was so easy to get in a tech bubble and expect others to know the basics, but most people couldn't tell you what a web browser is. I know people who get to their email by going to Google and searching for "yahoo mail".
       
 (DIR) Post #Az01V6vONueUDD30QS by msh@coales.co
       2025-10-08T12:37:38Z
       
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       @overholt generally speaking, for a number of years now, whenever I have been told "I can't find something on your website" it has been because they aren't going on the website. Typically they are putting their search terms into their browser's "everything bar" (formerly known as the address bar) and searching Google, which (increasingly as time passes) brings them to your website but not to the relevant page.But don't worry because Gemini™️ to the rescue! Instead of not taking them to the wrong page of your website it scrapes your entire website to train an LLM bot to conveniently provide an incorrect summary without them even having to go to your website in the first place! 🙃
       
 (DIR) Post #Az04c2XDP8vKUDjbU0 by bookscout@mastodon.social
       2025-10-08T13:12:31Z
       
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       @overholt The only success I’ve had in approaching this is to ask to observe while they search. It’s a big time sink, but if it’s faculty my thought is they tell their students how to search so it’s worthwhile for the knock on benefits.
       
 (DIR) Post #Az0C7EJINBCVfD2k3k by SRLevine@neuromatch.social
       2025-10-08T14:36:35Z
       
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       @overholt I'm a reasonably adept library user (as in I've had sessions with librarians on how search works and how to find things because I'm old enough that was a thing) and I still often type the item into the bar to search the library's website before I remember I need to go to a separate bar/page that has the catalog specific searching. And I wouldn't be surprised if many people just get stuck at that first stage that spits out "item not found" and don't know they aren't searching in the right search bar and do the "headdesk, whoops, let me find the right box" I do.