BOOLEAN OPERATOR IN LOGICAL AND EFFICIENT INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Abstract

Entitle BOOLEAN OPERATOR IN LOGICAL AND EFFICIENT INFORMATION RETRIEVAL database searching and Web searching became the most popular activities on the local and remote login, information retrieval (IR), which was performed mainly by professionals, researchers, now is an activity that every user on the Web is engaged in. The growing interest in general user's database searching and Web searching ability naturally leads to the awareness that some kind of guidance is needed. Since IR on the database or Web has many similarities with traditional IR, IR skills of retrieving information have been adopted to teach general users how-to search or about retrieving information from the Web. Two major concerns regarding users’ behavior are frequently found: the queries tend to be short, and Boolean operators are insufficiently used in structuring queries. Drawing on the social informatics view of IR and the semantic Web research, this thesis first argues that short queries have unique values in database searching and Web searching because OR and NOT operators shows grater effectiveness upto two keywords among the both user groups. It also argues that using Boolean operators is an effective strategy in database searching and Web searching. Because Web searching is generally motivated by knowledge discovery purpose, high recall and precision is not as important as it is in small databases, so database searching become more sophisticated with Boolean operators. The study also discusses the tradeoffs between the benefits of operator use with enhanced search interfaces and the time and effort that users need to exert to use the features. The study mainly focuses the information seeking behavior of library professionals, M. Lib. Sc. Students, general users of university level, and researcher. Their behavior or skill measured with the help of questionnaires on the basis of their personal knowledge and experience. Therefore BOOLEAN OPERATOR IN LOGICAL AND EFFICIENT INFORMATION RETRIEVAL study highlights the skills and abilities of potential and novice users. For this study data has been collected from four main libraries viz: TUCL, ICIMOD, SSBL, and KUSOM their professionals and users have taken as the source of information. Total 24 questions were formulated to evaluating their skills of coordinating vi the keywords and their techniques of implementing Boolean logical operators for successful query formulation. Total 63% and 48% of professionals and general users respectively were used Boolean operators while they navigating and it meets its hypothesis. In similar investigation total 65% professionals feel Boolean operators are user friendly and rest 35% not feels so. Similarly only 41% general users feel it user friendly whereas 59% general user not so. Five search tasks associated with TUCL online database has been presented to fill-up in each questionnaire, only 115 respondents were participated out of 150. The respondents so selected provided 115  5 3 1725 search results. After completion of search the output results as obtained by two broad user groups were compared with the result as obtained by database expertise for the relevance assessment. Total value obtained by two (2) broad user groups, professionals and general users to their five (5) titles, corresponding to three (3) Boolean operators i.e. total 253  30 Chi-Square ( 2  ) test was used as the significance of the study. Conclusion and recommendations has been drawn on the basis of this analytical and exploratory study. It finally discusses the carryover of user's information behaviors across different kinds of the digitized library or automated library database or Web, and the effects of the strong commercial forces which spur the need for sophisticated IR skills in shaping user's information habits. It concludes that a different model based on the social cognition theories and practical is needed to approach general user's problems with information retrieval on the database and Web. Ramesh Prajuli Central Department of Library and Information Science,T.U. Kirtipur.