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Emory University Emory Libraries

Discovery Seminar – Li – Fall 2023

Course guide for students in Professor Li's Beauty of Algorithms Discovery Seminar.
  Search Algorithms

Library Search

At Emory, our catalog of items is called Library Search. The catalog uses a set of algorithms (the exact algorithms are proprietary, so the only the vendor knows how different factors are weighted) to determine the relevance of each result, and ranks the results accordingly. Relevancy score is based on these factors:

  • How well the item matches the search term
    • Does the term you searched for appear in the title, author, or subject fields? Do words appear in the same order as your search term?
  • The item's academic significance
    • Did it appear in a peer-reviewed journal?
  • The item's relevance to the kind of search you made
    • If you searched for what seems to be an author name or specific title, the catalog will take into account more elements of citations.
    • If you searched for what seems to be a general topic, the catalog will prioritize informational and review resources.

There are also applications of sorting algorithms in how we organize and reshelve materials.

Library Algorithms

Every library search algorithm works slightly differently, just like every search engine is slightly different. Read the article below to learn a little about basic search relevance factors.