Known-item online searches employed by scholars using surname plus first, or last, or first and last title words

This experiment explores the effectiveness of retrieving the listing of a known-item book from the 3.6 million entry onine catalog at the library of the University of Michigan using various combinations of authorʹs name plus first and last title words. The principal finding was that 98.9% of the time a 1 to 20 line miniature catalog (minicat) was displayed that contained either the entry sought or a not-in-database (NID) reply when the search comprised all three words.