With the exponential growth of online information seeking by young people, it is imperative for health and sexual health educators to consider online information a resource young people will pursue. Access to accurate and comprehensive sexual health information is important, yet there is a scarcity of research evaluating the quality of this…

We researchers have taken searching for information for granted for far too long. The COVID-19 pandemic shows us the boundaries of academic searching capabilities, both in terms of our know-how and of the systems we have. With hundreds of studies published daily on COVID-19, for example, we struggle to find, stay up-to-date, and synthesize…

Aims: This article analyzes the digital childhood vaccination information network for vaccine-hesitant parents. The goal of this study was to explore the structure and influence of vaccine-hesitant content online by generating a database and network analysis of vaccine-relevant content. Method: We used Media Cloud, a searchable big-data platform…

The year 2011 was the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium's "rookie season" for the implementation of Primo, the 2010 Discovery Layer 500 race winner. In this article, the authors report on their transition to the cloud within Ex Libris Ltd.'s Primo TotalCare environment: their preparation, the steps involved…

This study evaluates the effectiveness of simple and expert searches in Google Scholar (GS), EconLit, GEOBASE, PAIS, POPLINE, PubMed, Social Sciences Citation Index, Social Sciences Full Text, and Sociological Abstracts. It assesses the recall and precision of 32 searches in the field of later-life migration: nine simple keyword searches and 23…

Hardware and software filters, which sift through keywords placed in Internet search engines and online databases, work to limit the return of information from these sources. By their very purpose, filters exist to decrease the amount of information researchers can access. The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the perceptions key…

To investigate the relationship between the retrieval mechanism and the level of question elaboration, this study divided 100 questions from the cystic fibrosis database into five conceptual categories based on their semantic representations. Two retrieval methods were chosen to investigate potential differences in outcomes across conceptual…

Describes a study that explored aspects of successive Dialog searches conducted by intermediaries for information seekers. Results show most successive searches involve some change in search terms and databases, but precision did not necessarily increase and the percentage of relevant items decreased significantly after three searches. (Author/LRW)

The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) system's computerized data base was the focus of a three-hour tutorial session on search strategies. This document is the workshop manual used by the tutorial participants. The discussion of the input phase of a computer search covers identification of the user population, receiving the inquiry,…

Compares support vector machines (SVMs) to Rocchio, Ide regular and Ide dec-hi algorithms in information retrieval (IR) of text documents using relevancy feedback. If the preliminary search is so poor that one has to search through many documents to find at least one relevant document, then SVM is preferred. Includes nine tables. (Contains 24…

This study looks at the issue of using alternative databases to support research on historical topics. The literature on online searching in history is not as well developed, nor as extensive, as literature about online searching in other subject areas. In addition, there are only two major databases that are history-specific in terms of subject…

Five models which perform search tasks of the Data Base Access and Search Environment (DBASE) are presented and used for comparison with subject search performance--unconstrained (rule-based, decision theoretic) and constrained (optimal rule-based, rule-based, probabilistic rule-based). Previous experiments and the modeling approach are briefly…

Results of investigation of exploitation costs of INSPEC database in selective dissemination of information service are presented. Parameters which influence exploitation costs--time spent looking for information, information query length, number of answers, time spent modifying user's query, and amount of modification--are analyzed. Six…

An online questionnaire survey was distributed amongst the Petherick Readers of the National Library of Australia, a user group of scholars and researchers. The survey asked questions about the readers' use and appreciation of the NLA catalogue. This group of users clearly appreciated the library catalogue and demonstrated that there are still…

Discusses methodological issues in empirical studies of information-related behavior in six specific research areas: information needs and uses; information seeking; relevance judgment; online searching (including online public access catalog, online database, and the Web); human-system interactions; and reference transactions. (Contains 191…