Retrieval effectiveness of surname-title-word searches for known items by academic library users

This article reports the findings of an experiment using a simulated title page, author surnames, and title words, one-third of which were selected by each of the three authors, to determine the frequency of one-screen displa ys when used to search for known items in an implied boolean retrieval syst em. Searches comprising surname plus one significant title word produced on e-screen displays 78% of the time; surname plus two words 97% of the time; and surname plus three words 98.5%. Three-quarters of the significant words were nouns.