What exactly is faceted searching and how could it help you? Lucidea brought this interesting information to us in their recent blog post, “A Firm Foundation for Faceted Search.”
Faceted search is a method for accessing information organized according to a faceted classification system. This allows users to explore a collection of information by applying multiple filters. Faceted searching works best when your content is well organized and well cataloged.
The terms filters and facets are often used interchangeably. While they are related, these concepts have important differences. Both are tools to help users narrow down large sets of content, but faceted navigation is both more flexible and powerful and more difficult to create and maintain.
There are certainly benefits to faceted search. For example, they are domain specific, so librarians and subject specialists can build specific taxonomies for each domain. In turn, this increases the speed and efficiency of finding your content.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
