Gospel Library Search Results

Today I wanted to find Elder Bednar's talk in which he referred to the enabling power of the atonement. I didn't know the title, so I searched for bednar enabling power atonement and got 2 hits: both were an article by Elder Eyring about Elder Bednar (one in the Ensign and the other in the Liahona), but they weren't the one I was looking for.

However, this article did cite the talk of Elder Bednar's that I wanted, which I learned was called "In the Strength of the Lord," from the November 2004 Ensign. The reference wasn't hyperlinked (great future enhancement, if it's not already underway...) So then I searched for bednar "in the strength of the Lord".

To my surprise, I got 7 hits but again none was the talk I was looking for. I finally just navigated to the talk.

I looked at my search terms carefully and also repeated the searches above and got the same results, so I know there wasn't a typo. I've had the same thing happen on a few other occasions--I've searched for words I knew were on a page but the page didn't show up in the search results.

Any idea why this happened, and what I might need to do differently in the future?

Thanks!

Kathryn

I don't know the details on the progress of the lds.org search engine. While they're working the bugs out, try typing the following query in google:

"bednar enabling power atonement site:lds.org"

The talk you're looking for shows up on the first hit--in the new gospel library-- and the third hit--same talk from the Conference Archives--(with personalized search turned off).

Hope this helps.

Aaron

I forwarded this thread over to the team in charge of searching for their review.

Tom

After playing around with the search feature on lds.org, I did find a way to yield the results.

First, don't use the drop down from the search. There is an advanced search and to get to it, just click on "Search" at the top of most pages. When you put your mouse over the Search word, it will still pop down, but click on Search anyway.

Once you have the search page, click on Advanced Search Options. This will lower the advanced search options.

For the search term, use "in the strength of the Lord"; then put a check mark in "Author Name" and type Bednar.

For me, this resulted in 2 hits: Ensign November 2004 and Liahona November 2004.

The search feature should be able to find the article how you described, but at least this is a work around.

Aaron, thanks for the Google reminder! Great idea.

Tom, thanks for forwarding the thread on to the right people.

MZundel, thanks for the tip on advanced searching. I tried it and it gave me exactly what I needed.

Kathryn

I hope I don't sound too critical, but I've all but given up on the search included on lds.org and will now only search with the suggested "site:lds.org [search terms]". It will always give me the correct results where using the sites built in search will very rarely yield the information I'm looking for.

Kathryn wrote:Today I wanted to find Elder Bednar's talk in which he referred to the enabling power of the atonement. I didn't know the title, so I searched for bednar enabling power atonement and got 2 hits: both were an article by Elder Eyring about Elder Bednar (one in the Ensign and the other in the Liahona), but they weren't the one I was looking for.

In case it's helpful to the folks who handle the Gospel Library search engine, I just had an experience similar to the one quoted above. Wanting to locate quickly President Benson's 1989 talk on pride, I searched for benson beware of pride. I got articles that cited this talk, but not the talk itself.

HTH,
Kathryn

That indicates that maybe the search engine does not recognize the titles as part of the text in some cases. In other cases I've put in a title as just words to search on and turned up the talk by that name.

Also with gospellink you can search by author so a search
Author: Benson
Keywords: Pride
All words: beware of pride

Might turn up the talk first.
Thing with search engines are that they only search specific parts of a document so unless President Benson says benson in his talk it might be ruled out by others who quote the talk and say benson in their talks.

thedqs wrote:Also with gospellink you can search by author so a search
Author: Benson
Keywords: Pride
All words: beware of pride

Might turn up the talk first.
Thing with search engines are that they only search specific parts of a document so unless President Benson says benson in his talk it might be ruled out by others who quote the talk and say benson in their talks.

What is gospellink?

I tried your suggestion using the Gospel Library search function. When I put beware of pride in the keyword box and used the Advanced Search to specify Benson as the author, the talk came up first. So then I tried a regular keyword search using beware pride, and the talk came up first. Since beware pride benson does not bring up the talk, it sounds like authors are not searched and in fact cause the talk to be excluded if the author does not appear in the body of the talk.

I thought I had found an exception when I looked for another talk called "On Keeping Confidences" by Larry Hiller: When I searched using keeping confidences hiller in the keyword box, the talk came up first. But "Larry Hiller" is mentioned in a note for the talk, and notes are apparently included. (Since most non-GA authors are described in a note, this protocol has the ironic effect of allowing author searches in the keyword box by non-GA's, but not by GA's!)

As a user, I'd like the ability to narrow my search by including the author in the keyword box, rather than having to go to advanced search options. But someone do a reality check for me: is there a reason this would not be a good idea?

Finally, here's another interesting example: I wanted to find Elder Maxwell's talk, "Murmur Not." Searching for murmur not maxwell does not bring up the talk, of course. But searching for murmur not brings up the talk second, and searching for complain contagious brings up the talk first. All those words appear in the talk. So it sounds like the title is not weighted, and perhaps not even searched. On our intranet at work we weight document titles so they come up higher in the search results--something I've found very helpful. That might not be a bad idea in the Gospel Library.

Fun stuff
Kathryn

Kathryn wrote:
...
As a user, I'd like the ability to narrow my search by including the author in the keyword box, rather than having to go to advanced search options. But someone do a reality check for me: is there a reason this would not be a good idea?

Finally, here's another interesting example: I wanted to find Elder Maxwell's talk, "Murmur Not." Searching for murmur not maxwell does not bring up the talk, of course. But searching for murmur not brings up the talk second, and searching for complain contagious brings up the talk first. All those words appear in the talk. So it sounds like the title is not weighted, and perhaps not even searched. On our intranet at work we weight document titles so they come up higher in the search results--something I've found very helpful. That might not be a bad idea in the Gospel Library.

Fun stuff
Kathryn

I'll second that the author and title should be indexed and searched for with at least as high a weighting (arguably a higher weighting) than words in the body of the document. My experience with conventional, non-Church search engines indicates it is standard practice to index and search for all terms in the document, including title, author, etc. For a system to effectively exclude a document because the author's name is in the list of search terms seems very counter-intuitive.

I wouldn't say it's counter inituitive. From the search engine's perspective it may make perfect sense. If I were giving a talk about pride and was heavily referencing back to President Benson's talk, I'd likely use the word "benson" in my text several times along with the word pride. Even if the author name were indexed simply as another word in the article body, President Benson's talk would be weighted less "heavily" since the word "benson" likely only shows up once (if at all) in the talk.

Perhaps this is what you were trying to say, and I misunderstood. Regardless, I agree that author names should be heavily weighted.

Kathryn wrote:What is gospellink?

Oh, GospelLink is a program published by Deseret Book which contains gospel resources (i.e. scriptures, talks, books written by both LDS and non-LDS authors, etc) Anyway this is a commercial product which BYU has access given to the Students. Similiar products are LDS Library (except no non-LDS authors and also a comercial product), and the free Gospel Library at www.lds.org.

Again I am just answering the question and not advertising any product.