Assessment of Information Retrieval

Evaluating and assessing the results of information retrieval is a vital part of the information-seeking process. After conducting a search, the usefulness, reliability and relevance of the search results have to be assessed before applying the retrieved information to written assignments. This includes assessing the amount and quality of the retrieved information. For example, it is quite common that the information seeker does not find enough relevant material, which could be prevented by carefully planning the search process and considering which sources to use.

When evaluating the quality of the search results, it is essential to determine the relevance of the material, that is, whether the material satisfies your information needs, or if it is useless or irrelevant from your point of view. Other question to think about is the accessibility of the retrieved information. No matter how relevant the material is, if it is not available to you in any form, it can be deemed useless.

If the results are not relevant, reliable or useful, the information seeker can refine the search or conduct new searches. If the result list contains seemingly relevant documents that match the topic of the search, but are written from a point of view that the information seeker does not find relevant, more attention should be given to the search string. It is important to think about the search terms, come up with alternative terms, narrow the search by using the AND operator, choose the right databases and search techniques, apply several search techniques and analyze the topic and its component concepts carefully. Analysis of this kind can be useful even if the search results are relevant, because conducting a new, slightly different search can provide the information seeker with new ways of approaching the topic.

Acquiring source material

After evaluating the search results, the information seeker has to locate the material that s/he regards as relevant. Some of the documents are online, in electronic form, but this is not always the case, and one should bear in mind that there are plenty of good sources available in printed form as well.

If the search has been conducted on a bibliographic database that does not contain full-text documents, the material has to be acquired elsewhere. The documents can located by checking Tamcat, or, if the library does not hold them, by resorting to Linda instead, and considering whether to order the material through the inter-library loan system.

Source criticism

Evaluating sources is an important skill that students need when writing research papers. When evaluating potential source material, the student should critically assess the

credibility, reliability and the quality of the material and decide if it is suitable for his/her purposes. Source evaluation is especially important when the source material is accessible through open networks, but must not be forgotten when using subscription-based databases since these sometimes contain references to popular journals in addition to academic ones.

Doctoral dissertations and peer-reviewed articles that are published in academic journals can be considered more reliable than popular journals and bachelors' or masters' theses. Nevertheless, source material should always be evaluated by taking into account the point of view or the focus of the article or dissertation, regardless of the type of material used.

When evaluating the quality of the material, the first thing to do is to consider the author's credentials, the institute or organization he is associated with, and the properties of the publication or article: does the author refer to reliable, respectable sources; is the journal academic or popular? Is the document up-to-date or does

it seem dated already? If using an electronic database or a website, when has it last been updated?

Source Criticism in Web-based Information Retrieval

When using websites and other web-based resources in research, source criticism and evaluation are necessary since there is no centralized control over what can be published in the Internet and the quality and reliability of online sources vary greatly. Using websites as source material can be problematic because they sometimes contain information that is dated or erroneous, or the website may still be under construction.

When writing a paper or an essay, make sure you check the author and publisher of the material you want to refer to, the author's relation to the topic and the purpose of the text you intend to cite. When using a website as a source, for example, one easy way to check the reliability of the source is to pay attention to the URL of the site. Remember to use common sense and your own knowledge on the subject when evaluating websites; the Internet contains good sources of information as well as bad or unreliable ones, but the information seeker should stay skeptical when considering whether to refer to a website or not.

Source : http://www.uta.fi/kirjasto/