Bell (2007) writes an interesting article about tools --she says--every searcher or librarian should ever need. She discusses Boolean operators, controlled vocabulary, field searching, proximity searching, truncation, limits, and “pearl-growing.” (2007, p. 1)
The first tool she discusses is Boolean, which directs the system to relate search terms the way the searcher wants them. The Boolean operators used are AND (+), OR, and AND NOT or NOT (-).by a minus sign or hyphen (-). AND results in an intersection of two sets, OR represents a joining of two sets—it actually retrieves either one or the other or both--, and NOT leaves out records that contain the word the searcher does NOT want. Most people feel comfortable using AND, but cannot understand why OR actually retrieves fewer results. Most people rarely use NOT because they do not want to exclude possible useful results. Many databases
provide Boolean search boxes with drop down lists usually defaulted to AND.
The next tool is controlled vocabulary. Controlled vocabulary is the same as subject headings, a thesaurus, descriptors, or authority control. Its use provides all the information on a topic a database contains, lessens the use of synonyms, gives precise hits, and allows the searcher to access information that is unfamiliar. Controlled vocabulary provides the user with a subject list that refines a search, especially with unfamiliar topics. Then there is field searching. This is searching in a specific field of the database record, such as author, title, date, journal name, etc. Most databases provide default search fields with drop down menus. The designers spent a lot of effo...
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No one can predict the future of human powered search engines. How will they affect web searches? People want to search the web; they want to be able to express their opinions free of repercussions, but how safe can they feel after hearing about these people hunts? The government might have to implement laws or policies to make the web safer for all.
Works Cited
Bell, Suzanne. (2007). Tools Every Searcher Should Know and Use. Online, 31(5), 22-
27. http://www.infotoday.com/online/
Ojala, M. (2007). Finding and Using the Magic Words: Keywords, Thesauri, and Free
Text Search. Online, 31(4), 40-42. http://www.infotoday.com/online/
Sanders, D. (2008). Tag--You're It!. American Libraries, 39(11), 52-54.
http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/
Xia, J. (2009). Extreme Human-Powered Web Search. Online, 33(1), 33-36.
http://www.infotoday.com/online /
The term “Controlled Vocabulary” is not universally understood by all to mean the same thing. So that it can be used freely without misunderstanding, this paper defines the term as a “considered list of values, designed to improve searchability”. A set of “rules of thumb” are provided for use in the determination of whether a given set of values is a Controlled Vocabulary, and guidance is provided on populating one.
Ontology contains a set of concepts and relationship between concepts, and can be applied into information retrieval to deal with user queries.
Matthias Jarke and Jurgen Koch's paper Query Optimization in Database Systems also displayes the continued importance of finding way to make efficient queries when using a database system. “Efficient methods of processinf unanticipated queries are a crucial prerequisite for the success of generalized database management systems.”( Query Optimization in Database Systems) The paper also explains the importance of knowing the database and what you are searching for. Also explained is the importance of finding alternate ways to make a quer...
Basic Search TechniquesSince the Google web interface is so easy to use, I won't describe the basic functionality of the http://www.google.com/ web page. Instead, I'll focus on the various operators available:
One of the wonderful things about the internet is how it makes life much easier if the information can be found in the convenience of the home instead of going to a library and making a day out of it. This is especially true if the internet offers updated information as soon as it happens were as a library may only update a few things every week or month at a time. It is truly remarkable how much information can be found and because of this it isn’t unbelievable that more and more people are using the internet instead of going to a library or using another service the internet can offer them. However, without organization and direction information is useless. Search engines offer this stepping stone by storing all the data in a manor that is searchable. Two of the major search engines are Google.com and Msn.com. Both offer great search engines and services, but have different styles and appeal to different audiences looking for different things.
The first IR system was built which used indexes and concordances. When the first large scale information systems were developed, computers can search indexes must better than human, which required more detailed indexing. However, indexing could also become too expensive and time consuming. Therefore, the idea of free-text searching is initiated, which eliminates the need for manual indexing. Objections pointed out that selecting the right words might not be the correct label for a given subject. One solution is official vocabularies. The idea of recall and precision also came out as methods for evaluating information retrieval systems, and they showed that free-text indexing was as effective as manual indexing and much cheaper. New information retrieval techniques such as relevance feedback, multi-lingual retrieval were invented. The 1960s also was the start of research into natural language question-answering, and researchers began building systems ...
There are many different types of databases, different performances of databases, and different database software functions. Before we get to much into databases lets take a step back and think about what a database really is and how they are applied. A database is a software program arranged to collect hold and process information. There are quite a bit of software programs out there already that can allow you to do all this. However, what makes databases different is that once you enter information in to, the database will operate the information in ways that allow you to analyze the information. Databases are designed in such a way that as to make it easier to obtain particular pieces of data. Databases are used in many ways existing in pretty much the entire world of computers. Databases are the most used method of storage for large multiuser funtions where the coordination between many users is necessary. This is just basically what a database is.
As people began to fimilarise themselves with the internet and how the search engines were
In today’s fast paced technology, search engines have become vastly popular use for people’s daily routines. A search engine is an information retrieval system that allows someone to search the...
"Although fully searchable text could, in theory, be retrieved without much metadata in the future, it is hard to imagine how a complex or multimedia digital object that goes into storage of any kind could ever survive, let alone be discovered and used, if it were not accompanied by good metadata" (Abby Smith). Discuss Smith's assertion in the context of the contemporary information environment
Databases have been in use since the earliest days of electronic computing, but the vast majority of these were custom programs written to access custom databases. Unlike modern systems which can be applied to widely different databases and needs, these systems were tightly linked to the database in order to gain speed at the price of flexibility.
Yao, Y. (2002, May 12-17). Information Retrieval Support Systems. The 2002 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, 1092-1097.
Search engines have many capabilities from using key words or phrases to find what you are looking for to using general statements to browse the web. But what exactly is a search engine? Search engines are huge databases of web page files that have been assembled automatically by machine. There are two types of search engines. One type is the individual search engine. This type of search engine compiles its information on to its own database making it accessible when you use that particular engine. It does not use any other engine?s information to help with your search. Then there are the meta-searchers which do not have their own databases. They use a combination of individual search engine?s information simultaneously, from a single site and using the same interface. Meta-searchers provide a quick way of finding out which engines are retrieving the best results for you in your search. There are two ways that Meta-searchers show their results. Most use a single list which display multiple-engine search results in a single merged list and had removed all the duplicate entries from the list. The second way that they display their results is through multiple lists. These are separate lists in which are displayed as they are received from each engine leaving the duplicate entries on the list.
Information retrieval (IR) is the task of finding texts matching some specific criteria within a large amount of unstructured data.