ARTICLE SUMMARY #1
Source Information
Killmer, K. & Koppel, N. (2002). So Much Information,
So Little Time. Evaluating Web Resources With
Search Engines. T-H-E Journal Online. Retrieved on
October 6, 2002 from the World Wide Web:
http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/articleprintversion.cfm?aid=4101
Summary
In the article, “So Much Information, So Little Time. Evaluating
Web Resources With Search Engines” by Kimberly A. Killmer
and Nicole B. Koppel, the author evaluates a number of search
engines by developing a hands-on exercise to students in an intro
to MIS class. The exercise focuses answering three questions:
1) Do all search engines find the same information?
2) How can we judge the retrieval effectiveness of these results?
3) Why do we get different results using different search engines
at the same time,
or the same search at different times?
Students are asked to search for a topic on various search engines.
They will then write down the number of returned sites they received
from that topic. Recall and precisions are used to measure the
effectiveness of each search engine. Recall is calculated as B/(A+B)
which means the percentage of those sites we want that were retrieves.
Precision is calculated as B/(B+C) which means the percentage
of sites retrieved that we actually wanted.
The two approaches to searching the Web are search engines and
subject directories. Search engines, such as google, yahoo, etc.,
are best used to locate a specific piece of information or known
document. Web documents or files are being automatically compiles
by “spiders” or “robots” prior to the
search. Search engines can also search multiple databases (google,
yahoo, AltaVista, etc.) simultaneously in a single interface.
This is referred to Metasearch engines. Subject directories are
best used when searching for general subject matter rather than
specific information.
There are also special effective ways to search for the items
you need. The search and the Boolean are the two types of logic
that are important searching effectively. Search logic refers
to the rules that the engine applies when interpreting the search
phrase the user enters. Boolean logic refers to the set of logical
operators (and, or, and not) used by search tools to combine search
terms.
After experimentations with these tests to MIS students, the
authors found that most students did not realize that all search
engines do not return the same results. They also found the concepts
of recall and precision useful in their comparison of search engine
effectiveness.
