Measuring Typographical Errors’ Impact on Retrieval in Bibliographic Databases

Typographical errors can block access to records in online catalogs; but, when a word contains a typo and is also spelled correctly elsewhere in the same record, access may not be blocked. To quantify the effect of typographical errors in records on information retrieval, we conducted a study to measure the proportion of records that contain a typographical error but that do not also contain a correct spelling of the same word. This article presents the experimental design, results of the study, and a statistical analysis of the results. We find that the average proportion of records that are blocked by the presence of a typo (that is, records in which a correct spelling of the word does not also occur) ranges from 35% to 99%, depending upon the frequency of the word being searched and the likelihood of the word being misspelled.