Specifying Mobile PAC Search Settings

Mobile PAC offers a quick search and an advanced search. Both options are keyword searches.

Quick Searches - When the user clicks Search the Catalog on the main page, the quick search page opens. In this type of search, the user simply types a search term in the Search for box and clicks Search. This search uses the search by, limit by, and sort by settings for quick searches from the PAC profile Search settings defaults. See Set default search selections. If the Search by setting in Polaris Administration is other than the default Any Field and the Limit by setting is other than the default All formats (TOM=*), the settings currently in effect appear below the Search for text box in Mobile PAC.

Advanced Search - When the user clicks Advanced Search on the Search page, the advanced search page opens. On this page, users can select the Search by field, the Limit by filter, and a sort order. The default values for Search by, Limit by, and Sort by are taken from the advanced search settings in the PAC profile Search settings defaults. See Set default search selections. The selections in the drop-down list for the Limit by filter are taken from the PAC Limit by display policy table. The user can also set the number of titles per page in the search results. The options are 5 (default), 10, 25, and 50.

The user’s selected search settings are retained until the user closes the browser, clicks Reset, or reopens the Advanced Search page by selecting the Advanced Search link on the quick search page. The Reset button resets all controls in the Advanced Search page to their default values and clears the text from the Search for box.

When search results are displayed, if the user selects the Search link in the bread crumb trail at the top of the window, the options set for the user’s most recent search are retained on the Advanced Search page.

To specify the default selections for quick and advanced searches:

Important:

These settings also affect Polaris PowerPAC.

  1. In the Administration Explorer tree view, open the Profiles folder for the organization, and click the PAC tab in the details view. Mobile PAC uses the settings for the user’s current connection branch.

Note:

For information about allowing branch switching, see Setting Up Mobile PAC Connections.

  1. Double-click Search settings defaults. The Search Settings Defaults dialog box opens.
  2. Set the quick search defaults:
  1. Click the Quick tab.
  2. Select the default search field in the Search by list. The setting applies to every quick search. The default is Any Field.
  3. Select the default search filter in the Limit by list. The available selections depend on the organization’s settings in the PAC Limit By Display policy table. The default selection is All formats (that is, no filter; TOM=*).

Note:

You can change the labels of existing filters and set up custom filters. See Setting Up Search Filters (Limit By).

  1. Select the default sort order for search results in the Sort by list. The setting applies to every quick search. The default selection is Relevance. This selection sorts results based on weighted keyword frequency and proximity, so that those most likely to meet the user’s needs appear first in the list. Most Popular sorts titles in the search results so that the titles most frequently checked out or requested over the past 120 days appear first in the list.

Options that include two categories sort results by the first category, then by the second category. For example, with Author, then Title, the titles are sorted alphabetically by author then, within each author’s works, alphabetically by title.

  1. Set the advanced search defaults:
  1. Click the Advanced tab.
  2. Select the default search field in the Search by list. The default selection is Any Field.
  3. Select the default search filter in the Limit by list. The default selection is All formats (that is, no filter; TOM=*).

Note:

You can change the labels of existing filters and set up custom filters. See Setting Up Search Filters (Limit By).

  1. Select the default sort order for search results in the Sort by - When searching local databases only list. The default selection is Relevance.
  1. Click Save.
  2. (Optional) To set automatic subsorting by title for certain sort types, set the PAC profile Search: Sub-sort-by-title to Yes. This allows patrons to quickly find a known title in a large results set.

When the profile is set to Yes, the records are first sorted by the selected sort option and then sorted alphabetically by title, ignoring nonfiling characters (respecting the value of the 245 second indicator). The setting does not affect these sort types: relevance, most popular, title, author then title, title then author, title then publication date, title then format, publication date then title, call number then title.

Note:

This setting affects both Polaris PowerPAC and Mobile PAC. The profile is available at the system, library, and branch levels. It is set to No by default; you may want to leave this setting if you find the automatic subsort impacts performance.

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