How Does the Catalog Rank Results?

When you search by relevance, all the parts (called fields) of each Item Record are searched. However, some fields are given more importance, or weighed more, than others. For example, because the title field is weighed heavier than the publisher field, a search by relevance for the words New York, would return a Title List which has records containing the words New York in their titles ranked above records that only had the words in the publisher field. In addition, the more times a term appears in a record, the higher up on the Title List it will be. The first example below contains the phrase New York in the title, and multiple times in the subject headings. The second example only contains the phrase in the publisher field and is ranked lower than the first.

Item Record #1

Item Record #2

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Last Revised: MS - 8/14/2007