Transcript Material in Electronic and Web Environments

Quality in cyberworld
Maureen Henninger
[email protected]
Quality of information
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
Peter Steiner (1993). The New Yorker, 69 (20) p. 61
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Is it out there somewhere?
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Don’t assume that it exists in digital form
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Don’t assume that it exists on the Web
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Don’t assume that it is free
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Don’t assume that it is true or has quality
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Do use trusted, value-added resources/services
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Cyber somewhere
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The Web
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Approximately 4-5 billion documents
Collected into directories
Indexed by search engines
The invisible Web
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
Approximately 550 billion documents
Stored in databases
NOT indexed by Web search engines
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Trusted, value-added resources
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Evaluated resources
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Similar to an academic library
Selection criteria for inclusion
e.g. BUBL, Infomine
Resources with added metadata for detailed
searching, e.g. author, ERIC subjects
Subject gateway
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
Specialised collection
Selected by subject experts
Evaluated & annotated resources
Similar to an art library
e.g. Artifact
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What are you looking for?
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Searching for specific information or
documents
Looking for general information
‘Just browsing’
‘I need a fact’
Monitoring
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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A library mental model
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Searching for a specific
document
Just browsing
Looking for general
information
Need a fact
Searching for specific
information
Monitoring trends
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Catalogue, author or title
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Classified sections
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Encyclopaedias
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Reference book
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Catalogue or indexes —
subject or keyword
Latest journals — new book
shelf, alerting services
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What are the discovery tools?
Two general categories
Search engines
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General
Specialised (by subject)
Directories
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General (catalogues of resources)
Specialised (subject gateways)
Directories of directories, databases
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Directories vs search engines
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Catalogue of resources
created by humans
Most popular are
commercial, eg. Galaxy,
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Open Directory
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Use for broad subject
treatment
Often indiscriminate in
quality
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Database of keywords
created by computer robots
Huge databases — Google
points to 4+ billion
documents
Use for unique documents,
highly specific information
No quality control
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Searching for a specific document
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‘Publisher’ site e.g. Department of Education,
Science and Training
Search engine e.g. Google
Database eg. ERIC [Eductational Recources],
National Geographic Publications
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Examples
A homepage
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Use Google to find Artifact, which is part of the
Resource Discovery Network in the U.K. – use I'm
Feeling Lucky!
The Australian report “Rural Teacher Education"
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Use Yahoo
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"rural teacher education" AND inurl:au
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Limit the search to pdf format
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Browsing, general information
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Specific resources e.g. Oxfam’s Cool Planet for
Teachers
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Directories
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General e.g. Galaxy, Open Directory
Evaluated e.g. BUBL Link, KidsClick, Infomine
Subject gateways e.g. GEM, Artifact, ERIN
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Examples
1. General directory
Use Open Directory to find information on
dinosaurs
2. Directory of evaluated resources
Use BUBL to find Web resources on dinosaurs
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Examples of subject gateways
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Aboriginal Studies WWW Virtual Library
AGRIGATE (Australian)
Artifact
ERIN
Gateway Antarctica
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Specialised education gateways
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AwesomeLibrary
EDNA
Educator’s Reference Desk
European Schoolnet
GEM
MarcoPolo
SOSIG: Education
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©Maureen Henninger
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Selected directories of gateways
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Australian Subject Gateways
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BUBL Link
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BIOME
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PINAKES
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WWW Virtual Library
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Examples
1.
2.
Use MarcoPolo to find algebra lesson plans for
6-8 grades students
Use the WWW Virtual Library to find an
information literacy subject gateway
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Monitoring - keeping up
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News search engines eg. RocketInfo
Journal scans eg. Ingenta
Subject gateways
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often have the “latest news”
Education monitoring services
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Australia.edu
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Examples
1.
2.
Use RocketInfo to find the past week’s
cricket scores in Zimbabwe
Use Australia.edu to see what happened
today in history
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Search strategies
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Know who has the
information
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Go to the site
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Need general information
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Use subject directories
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Need specific information
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Use search engines
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Best results
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
Use advanced searching
techniques
Use subject gateways
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Search engines
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Only two major general ones
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Killed off April 2004
Minor ones, e.g.
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Google and Yahoo
End of 2003 AltaVista and AlltheWeb purchased
by Yahoo
HotBot and Teoma
Specialised ones, eg.
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RocketInfo, GoogleNews (news), AskJeeeves for
Kids,SportQuest, Topica (discussion groups)
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Best results with search engines
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‘Conceptualise’ your search
Use advanced searching techniques
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Boolean operators
Proximity operators
Field searching, e.g. in the title
Why use advanced searching techniques
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To get more precise/relevant results
Techniques are used in database searching, e.g.
ERIC
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Search example
I need information on Australian or New Zealand government
policy for social justice in education
1st set of concepts
2nd set of concepts
3rd set of concepts
education policy
education
education
social justice
social justice
social justice
government
government policy
government
Australia
Australian policy
Australia
New Zealand
New Zealand policy
New Zealand
Searching with each set of concepts would return different documents
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Boolean & proximity operators
Boolean OR
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Boolean AND
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narrows the search (all terms must be present)
Boolean NOT
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broadens the search (any one term must be
present)
use for synonyms
term must not be present (can be problematical)
Proximity
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
specifies contextual relationship, eg. phrase
system specific
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Searching with Yahoo
social justice education
6,380,000
social AND justice AND education
6,380,000
"social justice" AND education
1,230,000
("social justice" OR "social capital") AND education
1,400,000
“social justice” AND “social capital” AND education
16,700
intitle:"social justice" AND intitle:education
462
(intitle:"social justice" OR intitle:"social capital") AND
intitle:education
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(intitle:"social justice" OR intitle:"social capital") AND
intitle:education AND (Australia OR “New Zealand”)
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Death of AltaVista
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Died April 2004
Most sophisticated search syntax
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Similar to that used in databases, eg ERIC
Used proximity operators and truncation
“ ”
NEAR
within n
comput*
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
= a phrase
= a bi-directional adjacency
e.g. blind venetian, venetian blind
= within n words of each other
= computer, computers,
computerisation, computing
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Advanced searching techniques
Search request
Results
library OR libraries
7,580,000
library AND design
4,290,000
“library design”
111,000
library NEAR design
784,860
(library OR libraries) AND design
5,100,000
(library OR libraries) NEAR design
1,850,000
title:library AND title:design
8,490
title:“library design”
1,620
“library design” NEAR school
9,225
“library design” NEAR (school* OR educat*)
12,650
(library NEAR design) AND (school* OR educat*)
14,000
(library NEAR design) NEAR (school* OR educat*)
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Six trends in library design
Previews and overviews in digital libraries: designing surrogates
to support visual information seeking
School libraries: a design recipe for the future
Inaccessible Web design from the perspective of a blind
librarian
AskEric
('library design') :Title
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(librar* adj design*) :Title
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(librar* NEAR design*) :Title
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(librar* NEAR design*) :Title NOT (librar* adj design*) :Title
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(librar* w/5 design*) :Title
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•Six trends in library design
•An analysis of seven academic libraries designed by Perry Dean Rogers
•Maintaining and designing library buildings to provide transcendent spaces
•Information systems design: the librarian's role
•Designing and maintaining your library's Web site
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Current search syntax
Search
engine
Simple
search
Advanced
search
Boolean
Nesting
Proximity
Truncation
Field search
Google
Yes
Yes
OR
AND is
automatic
No
""
No
intitle:
inurl:
link:
site:
filetype:
~ for plurals
use –
(minus)
for NOT
Yahoo
Yes
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
Yes
OR
AND
NOT
Yes
( )
""
No
intitle:
inurl:
domain:
linkdomain:
filetype:
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Yahoo
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Since August, Yahoo’s algorithm seems to have
changed
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Full Boolean operators do not always work the way
you expect
AND is the default
filetype: does not work
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You must select the format from the Advanced search
Possibly it is better to use the advanced search,
but some difficulties with phrase searching
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Example - Yahoo
Information on bullying in Australian schools pain
Search request
(bully OR bullying OR bullies) AND (school OR schools)
(bully OR bullying OR bullies) AND (school OR schools) AND
Australia
(intitle:bully OR intitle:bullying OR intitle:bullies) AND
(intitle:school OR intitle:schools) AND intitle:australia
intitle:school OR intitle:schools intitle:bully OR intitle:bullying OR
intitle:bullies AND Australia
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
Results
2,180,000
293,000
18
237
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Example - Google
Information on bullying in Australian schools pain
Search request
Results
bully OR bullying OR bullies school OR schools
598,000
bully OR bullying OR bullies school OR schools Australia
104,000
~bully ~school ~Australia
137,000
allintitle:~bully ~school ~Australia
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intitle:~bully intitle:~school intitle:~Australia
49,7000
Many of these are not correct
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Specialised search engines
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
AskEric (education)
AskJeeves for Kids
Bartleby (reference books)
Biographical Dictionary
OneKey (“Google for kids”)
PeachPod
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Example
Use OneKey to find Web information on
Australian rainforest frogs
allintitle:~frog ~australia rainforest
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Databases via the Web
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Information stored in databases
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Tend to be scholarly information
Bibliographic data, eg.
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
abstracts of journal articles
conference proceedings
full text of journal articles
technical reports
library catalogue records
Statistics, eg. census & demographic data
Reference data, eg. chemical properties
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Examples of educational databases
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AskERIC
CHID (Combined Health Information Database)
Education-line (electronic texts in education &
training)
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Home Economics Database
World Data on Education (UNESCO)
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Problem
Suppose you want authoritative information
about Australian natural resources
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Search for “natural resources database”
Australia on Google
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Results — list of 2,080
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Which is the ‘best’ one?
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If you knew of ANRO
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Use Google’s I’m feeling lucky
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Discovery & access
A two step process
1.
2.
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
Finding a database which may have the
required information
Formulating, issuing and refining a search
query in the database
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Directories of searchable databases
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Academic Info
BUBL
Collection of Special Search Engines
Direct Search
Infomine
Internet Public Library
Invisible Web (Intelliseek)
DADI (Les bases de données gratuites sur Internet)
Librarians' Index to the Internet
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Example
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Authoritative information on amphibians
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Use AcademicInfo to find an appropriate
database
(amphibia OR frog) AND database
OR
use the index Sciences > Environmental
Studies > Biodiversity > Databases
SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
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Field searching
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General search engines
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Specialised search engines
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title, url, file format
date, document type
Databases
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SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
many fields, depending on the record
structure
Eric, CHID
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©Maureen Henninger
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©Maureen Henninger
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ERIC interfaces
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AskERIC
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baldry*:author
bully*:title
bully*:maj,min
200*:publication_date
author
title
all ERIC subject heading
publication date
Ovid
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baldry$.au.
bullying.sh.
journal$.pt
2002.yr.
SLAV, September 2004
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(truncation allowed)
subject heading
document type
publication year
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Cyberworld quality


Use subject gateways and evaluated
directories
Use search engines with caution



Use specialised search engines
Use databases


SLAV, September 2004
©Maureen Henninger
Use Boolean operators and field searching
Find them in database directories
Use advanced searching techniques
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