HANDLING SPELLING-ERRORS IN ONLINE CATALOG SEARCHES

The purpose of this paper is to add to our understanding and knowledge of spelling errors in online catalog searches based on empirical stud ies of spelling errors in online catalog searches and suggest ways in which systems that detect such errors should handle the errors that th ey detect. One study of spelling errors in online catalog searches inv olved a categorization of user queries for subjects that were extracte d from four university libraries' online catalog transaction logs. The results of the analysis demonstrated that less than 6% of user querie s that match the catalog's controlled and free-text terms contain spel ling errors. This percentage did not account for spelling errors in us er queries that failed to match the catalog's controlled and free-text terns, because of the difficulty of verifying certain terms and phras es and of collection failure. The results of a related study involved user responses to an experimental online catalog that detected possibl y misspelled words. While the majority of users corrected misspelled q uery words, a sizable proportion made an action that was even more det rimental than the original misspelling; for example, they added anothe r word or phrase to the query in. addition to the misspelled word. Thi s paper concludes with three recommendations for improvements to onlin e catalogs to assist users in the correction of misspelled query words and the detection of queries that fail due to collection failure.