Comparison of full-text versus metadata searching in an institutional repository: Case study of the UNT Scholarly Works

TL;DR

This study compares the effectiveness of full-text versus metadata searching in an institutional repository, revealing how search results are distributed between metadata and full text for scholarly materials.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of search term effectiveness, quantifying the reliance on metadata versus full text in an institutional repository.

Findings

Metadata-only searches account for a significant portion of results.

Full-text searches retrieve additional unique results.

Combination of both methods enhances discovery.

Abstract

Authors in the library science field disagree about the importance of using costly resources to create local metadata records, particularly for scholarly materials that have full-text search alternatives. At the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries, we decided to test this concept by answering the question: What percentage of search terms retrieved results based on full-text versus metadata values for items in the UNT Scholarly Works institutional repository? The analysis matched search query logs to indexes of the metadata records and full text of the items in the collection. Results show the distribution of item discoveries that were based on metadata exclusively, on full text exclusively, and on the combination of both. This paper describes in detail the methods and findings of this study.