Information Retrieval Systems Homework 1

Try out three search systems from the list below and, for each, answer the questions that follow the list of systems. Be sure to try several types of searches (e.g., your personal interest, imagined academic or professional information needs, searches you see in Web logs, etc.) and to explore both basic and advanced search feautres (when the system provides multiple modes).

Here are the questions:
  1. How easy is it to learn to use the system?
  2. How useful would the system be in the hands of a subject matter expert that is not a professional searcher? Please include in your discussion who a subject matter might be.
  3. How useful would the system be in the hands of a professional searcher that is not a subject matter expert?
  4. How well can the user control the balance between comprehensiveness (recall) and the elimination of unwanted documents (precision)?
  5. How well are you able to determine what the system does and does not make available for you to find? In other words, after you have completed a search, do you have a good feel for how comprehensive your search really was?
You can take either a comparative (System A is better than System B for question 2) or absolute (System A was suitable for tasks a and b, but not c) approach to constructing your answer -- whichever style you prefer. Grading of this assignment will be done holistically, based on whether you uncovered interesting issues that could help to guide your exploration of system design issues this semester. Please focus on system design features when you develop your answers, and do not develop overly subjective answers without much evidence. This exercise should take you 2-3 hours, including writing up your answers to the questions).

You should submit your assignment by creating a Web page for this course (anywhere you like, most students will probably use their own Web accounts; if you do not have a Web account, please email me your preferred userid and password, and I will create a Web account on my class server), posting your assignment there, and sending the URL by email to the instructor. Unless you request otherwise, your URL will be made publicly available on the course Web page after the due date for the assignment (so that you can all see everyone's reactions). If I fail to create your class Web account for you before the assignment due time, please email your work to me (wuyj at lsu dot edu).

Acknoledgement to Doug Oard (INST 734).