Some libraries at universities at least know about the problem. My niece is working to improve the website of the Cornell Law School library. I’ll leave it to you to decide how success or how far along she’s gotten.

Perhaps one problem is that the people involved and those using the site regularly have learned the system’s quirks - may even like the idea that they have mastered the system and feel that it’s okay, perhaps like you get around some government sites.

Hmm, we never did really decide why Woot took off.

Cheers, Larry/Myo

I had to laugh when i got the following result for the first book that came to mind: “Please provide a valid query (Word greater than length 3)” the book was “the old man and the sea”.

It takes a lot of disk space to index all words, including those shorter than four characters, but it’s worth it.

We currently have the same limitation with the search at Uclue, which is equally lame for the same reasons. When Google started up, they also failed to index small common words, but props to them for overcoming that limitation. In time we’ll overcome it at Uclue too.

There’s an old English saying “Don’t spoil the ship for a halfpenny worth of tar”, and I hope Carnegie-Mellon realizes that a ten percent increase in expenditure will yield a thousandfold improvement in the usability of the resource.