Problems with Stop Words

     What will you find when you Search for Khaled Hosseini’s new book, And the Mountains Echoed, in a library catalog?  Chances are you will retrieve quite a number of hits about ‘mountains’ and ‘echo’ but not the novel itself. Why is that? The book exists. The terms you entered are valid. Why can’t you find it? The problem is related to the words ‘and’ and ‘the’, which unfortunately appear at the beginning of the title. Those words are called ‘stop words’. Stop words are very common words that normally add little meaning to the subject content of the document being indexed. Most of the stop words are there to make a sentence grammatically correct. If you ignore them, a sentence will still make sense, somewhat. However, the problem is that search engines are ignoring them too.

     Most search engines do not index stop words in order to save disk space, to make searching more efficient, and to reduce result pollution. Some search engines might replace them with what is called a marker.

Consider this sentence:

                It is an unforgettable novel about finding a lost piece of yourself in someone else.

There are 7 stop words in this sentence; it, is, an, about, a, of, in. The sentence would be stored like this:

                *** unforgettable novel * finding * lost piece * yourself * someone else.

     To speed up the search process, search engines do not search for certain terms in order to save time. Consider the title And the Mountains Echoed.  A search engine will look for ‘mountains’ and ‘echoed’. To save time, it will most likely exclude terms that it considers too common, such as ‘and’ and ‘the’.

     So what should a researcher do short of asking every author in the world not to use stop words in the titles of their books? One way to avoid this problem is by entering search phrases as search engines are programmed to understand.  You can accomplish this by using markers where stop words appear.  Instead of And the Mountains Echoed, enter ** Mountains Echoed. Or skip certain words entirely; Dark and Deadly Pool instead of The Dark and Deadly Pool. You can also put the phrase in quotation marks for the search engine to search the exact phrase.

     Fortunately, database publishers understand this problem, and they are doing something about it. Some add extra script to let search engines be aware of certain terms. Some create a stop list, which is a list of stop words, and apply it to the content indexed in the database. However, this problem is still looming and will not go away entirely. The other day Mel, our cataloger, could not find a record for And the Mountains Echoed in the library catalog.  His search turned into a definite stop word dilemma!

Old School Punctuation Rule

What does the MLA Style Manual say about the amount of spaces to insert after each punctuation mark?  When I first saw this question come across the ALA listserv, I quickly dismissed it.  How much can librarians write about a topic such as this?  I must admit that I soon realized my knowledge and understanding of this rule was far from accurate.

I am a two spaces woman.  As I write, I punctuate each sentence and insert two spaces before beginning my next sentence.  In my eyes, it is clean and clearly delineates the beginning and ending of each sentence.  When I took typing in high school, we were told about this rule and it stuck with me for, I guess I will admit it…, forever.  Why question such a functional, noninvasive rule?

As I read the posts on today’s listserv, I was amazed to find out the current MLA Style calls for simply one space after each punctuation mark.  One space…  How can that be?  This bit of information from the Grammar Girl website further clarifies some of the reasoning behind this punctuation shift:

“Here's the deal: Most typewriter fonts are called monospaced fonts. That means every character takes up the same amount of space. An "i" takes up as much space as an "m," for example. When using a monospaced font, where everything is the same width, it makes sense to type two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence to create a visual break. For that reason, people who learned to type on a typewriter were taught to put two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. 

But when you're typing on a computer, most fonts are proportional fonts, which means that characters are different widths.  An "i" is more  narrow than an "m," for example, and putting extra space between sentences doesn't do anything to improve readability.”

So, the rule is quite clear.  If writing a paper using MLA Style, insert one space only after each punctuation mark!

Just out of curiosity… did anyone check the amount of spaces I inserted between sentences in this blog entry?  If you counted 2, you are correct!  By the way, APA Style still calls for the standard two spaces between sentences!

Michele Gregg

Library welcomes Kultida Dunagin

Kultida Dunagin is our new electronic resources librarian.    Previously she worked for the University Center of Greenville where she was a librarian for 15 years and  Spartanburg Methodist College from 1993-1998.

Kultida  began her academic career by earning a bachelor's degree in English from Chulalongkorn Univeristy in Bangkok, Thailand.  From there she earned her first masters which is in Theatre Arts from California State University in Los Angeles.  Following that she moved to the University of North Texas for a PhD in College Teaching. When she moved to South Carolina she decided  that the library profession is where her passion was and earned a second masters  in Library and Information Science from the University of South Carolina. 

Kultida is fluent in English, Thai, and French.  She translates novels, such as books by Ken  Follett, from English into Thai for a publisher in Thailand.  She has authored a number of books in Thai including one on President Obama. Her PhD Dissertation is on the "Cultural Identity in Thai Movies and its Implications for the Study of Film in Thailand."

Kultida and her daughter Niki live in Spartanburg.

New Books!

The Tri-County Technical College Library faculty and staff made its annual Books-a-Million run! We purchased titles for all three campuses.  Each campus will have a display during June that will feature the new books. Many of our faithful library patrons have made requests for casual reading, as well as for subject areas that needed up-to-date information for student research purposes. Some of the subjects that we purchased materials for are: the Romanovs, NCLEX, ASVAB, credit repair, personal finance, Military history, local history, alternative medicine, weaponry, gardening, cook books, and architecture. Some of the popular titles that we purchased are: Inferno by Dan Brown, NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, Waiting to be Heard by Amanda Knox, Winter of the World by Ken Follett, Getting in!: the Zinch guide to College Admissions and Financial Aid in the Digital Age by Steve Cohen, et al, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloots, and My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor, as well as many, many more. The new titles have not been fully processed so they are not yet available for check out. We will keep you informed on the progress of the processing of these books.  If you made a specific request, we will send you an email to let you know when your title is ready.

Library Gets a Face Lift

For the first time in over 20 years, the TCTC library will be remodeled.  This summer project will include new furniture, a new circulation and reference desk area, new carpet, new paint on the walls, and a café area.  We are especially proud of the anticipated updates to the large study rooms.  These rooms will include a large screen monitor that is hooked to individual input stations.  By using this technology students can bring 21^st century skills to their team group projects.  See Backbone Media Platform. Additionally we will be adding a Mac Bar area that will include Mac computers. Colors will focus on the TCTC colors of red, black, and khaki.  Planning for this project started a few years ago and ramped up in December, 2012, with the choice of KI as the furniture vendor and designer.  During January, February, and March, colors, patterns, and furniture was discussed between a number of staff and faculty and students. In April, the library staff began the process by shifting some of the shelving so that the large back window area became more open.  We are in the process of moving the bound periodicals to another location. That area will become the Legal area and support the new paralegal program that starts in Fall, 2013.  The next steps will be redoing the carpet, painting the walls, and updating the study rooms. There will be different times that specific areas of the library will need to be blocked off to accommodate all these adjustments.  Furniture should arrive by the end of July.  We anticipate the entire project to be complete for the beginning of the fall semester.  A color board and design plans are at the circulation desk. Feel free to stop by and look at the redesign.

 

 

National Library Week: Like Shark Week, but with Cardigans

NLW was 4/15/13-4/21/13 this year.  I usually don’t pay too much attention to it, but when I worked at the Oconee County Public Library we liked to make a big deal of it.  We created displays, scheduled programs at each library location, and sometimes even had “Fine Free Week” if overdue books were returned.

I’ve been the main Instruction Librarian at TCTC for almost 6 years, so most students have attended a workshop in which I guided them through the process of using an academic library.  Part of the English 101 workshop explains the differences between academic journals and magazines.  I use a journal article called “library anxiety among students” as an example of research results published in academic journals.  When I talk about “library anxiety”, many students giggle self-consciously, then furtively glance around to see if others in the room also just realized that they suffer from a touch of it themselves.

The quote, National Library Week:  Like Shark Week, but with cardigans, is from a listserv of community college librarians.  While it was posted in jest, it makes me wonder why the general population continues to see librarians as (at best) uptight shushers and (at worst) sharks in sweaters.  Here at the TCTC library all of us strive to be friendly, approachable, and helpful to students, so rest assured that we are here to assist you with whatever you need.  I’ve answered plenty of reference questions, but I’ve also given people directions to hotels, helped them register for next semester’s classes, given out BandAids, and on one occasion found enough safety pins for a student to fix the zipper in her pants.  Obviously, a shark in a sweater would not do that!

A New Discovery Service

Students engage in information searches through Google on a daily basis.  As we work to meet the needs of our students, the library wanted to adopt a Discovery Service that reflects a similar search experience.  This service, called MegaSearch, is one that many students take advantage of on a daily basis.  It feels like a Google search, retrieves many hits like a Google search, and is easy to use.

Most of our databases and the library’s catalog can now be searched via this tool.  Additionally, hits obtained from a single search can be filtered through a source selection feature of the service.  Are you looking specifically for a reference source, a magazine, or possibly a newspaper article?  If so, select the box on the left side of your results screen to access this feature! 

The MegaSearch box can be found on the TCTC library’s home page.  The address is http://library.tctc.edu.  Good luck!