I searched for a title and got a result that was completely unrelated to the item I searched, why?
Applies to
- WorldCat Discovery
Answer
When a user does a search the entire record is searched, including any local bibliographic data (LBD). This search includes metadata that is not necessarily visible in WorldCat Discovery.
Note: Even if a specific bibliographic index is used (such as su:), WorldCat Discovery will perform a keyword (kw:) search of the LBD on the record simultaneously. In some cases, even if the text you searched is not in a subject field of the LBD, it will be found due to the simultaneous keyword search.
In order to refine the search more, try using quotes around the search terms or use a title search. This can cause an issue with finding a record for an item that was cataloged with a one word title. Since there are too many results, we can use the NOT boolean along with other search indexes to limit the results list and surface only our desired result set. For example this search: (ti:MONEY NOT ut:MONEY) produces a results list composed of all records with the title "Money".
Additional information
Please see the Title search index and Local bibliographic data (LBD) field mapping for more information.