This thesis evaluates and compares the retrieval effectiveness of the two search engines Google Scholar and Scirus, which both specialises in indexing scholarly material on the web as well as journal articles. Thirty search queries are used and the first twenty retrieved documents for each query are examined for topical relevance and scholarly content. The search queries are based on legitimate information needs taken from a scientific questionbox on the web. Queries are expressed with advanced search operators and are the same for both search engines. Precise relevance criteria are set up and a binary scale is used when judging.

The aim of this thesis is to compare the effectivity of using a natural language and a controlled vocabulary when performing subject searches in the bibliographic database LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts. 20 topics were created and for each topic two searches were made, one by using a query formulated with natural language directed to the abstract field and the other one by using a query formulated with descriptors from the thesaurus in LISA directed to the descriptor field. The average relative recall amounted to 64,8% for the AB-queries and 54% for the DE-queries. Failure analysis showed that the majority of the relevant documents not retrieved by AB-queries could have been retrieved with other query terms, such as synonyms. In a natural language there are many different ways of expressing a topic, and this tends to have a negative effect on retrieval effectivity.

Home care services have had, and will have a major imortance in the future. More people will be using home care services as a consequence of political strategies but also as an effect of caretakers own wishes. The purpose of this study was to illuminate the factors that are significant for a successful encounter between a caretaker and a caregiver. The study is made as a qualitative analysis of litterature. The data collection was based on Polit and Hungler's model of Information retrieval and the data analysis on Graneheim and Lundman's model of analysis.

Home care services have had, and will have a major imortance in the future. More people will be using home care services as a consequence of political strategies but also as an effect of caretakers own wishes. The purpose of this study was to illuminate the factors that are significant for a successful encounter between a caretaker and a caregiver. The study is made as a qualitative analysis of litterature. The data collection was based on Polit and Hungler's model of Information retrieval and the data analysis on Graneheim and Lundman's model of analysis.

This thesis describes the development of a tank insert for diesel cars, from idea to a prototype. The idea is to design an insert which makes it impossible to refuel petrol in a diesel car. The insert shall be installed in the existing tank opening on diesel cars. The tank insert is designed for the Swedish company SverigeGrepen AB located in Vänge, just outside Uppsala. Their main product is a pitchfork that is ergonomically designed and durable.A pre-study were performed in which information relating to fuel caps, tank openings, petrol- and diesel nozzles were collected.

This report describes the creation of an interactive text system for storing, retrieval and publishing of texts, ITS.My task was to create a GUI together with a database capable of handling text, commenting of texts, references between texts, and the capability to associate images with texts.After enough texts have been inserted into the database, there shall be an ability to generate a report out of them.The report describes the methods used when the GUI was implemented, how the database was modelled and implemented, and how the security aspects where solved.The entire project is created with the help of Java, MySQL server, Connector/J and OpenSSL.Furthermore the functions of the GUI and the future of ITS is described..

The theoretical focus in this master is Information retrieval (IR), and especially the part of IR that includes interactivity. This research is by some researchers called IIR. Our principal aim was to examine if search engines on the WWW are taking advantage of research results from IIR research. A way to do this is to look at the application of special features, in this case query expansion (QE) and relevance feedback (RF). Both these methods aim for a better matching of documents and the searchers information need.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness of three different search engines on the Internet: Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search. We have constructed 25 topics and queries with varying contents, in order to test the width of the search engines as much as possible. In every search we have evaluated the first 20 hits in each of the search engines. The measures we have used are precision and cumulated gain. Precision is based on a binary scale and cumulated gain is calculated by means of a non-binary relevance scale.

The aim of this study is to investigate which communication strategies and channels the mu- nicipal company Falu Energi & Vatten should use in order to become more efficient in com- municating with citizens between 18 to 29 years old. The company is owned by the munici- pality of Falun and manages community services in electricity, district heating, fresh water, sewerage, metropolitan area network and waste disposal. The following theories have been used in the study: convergence culture, digital natives, information overload, communication strategies and uses & gratifications theory. The methods used in the study are 4 focus group interviews and one informant interview. The members of the focus groups where within the age range 18-29 years and lived in the city of Falun.

This is a heuristic evaluation of Umeå university library?s Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC). It makes use of four of Nielsen?s ten heuristics, flexibility and efficiency to use, match between the system and real world, visibility of system status, and aesthetic and minimalist design. The evaluation was done by having 3 evaluators inspect the interface individually, as per Nielsen?s (1990) recommendation of 3-5 evaluators.

The aim of this study is to investigate which communication strategies and channels the mu- nicipal company Falu Energi & Vatten should use in order to become more efficient in com- municating with citizens between 18 to 29 years old. The company is owned by the munici- pality of Falun and manages community services in electricity, district heating, fresh water, sewerage, metropolitan area network and waste disposal. The following theories have been used in the study: convergence culture, digital natives, information overload, communication strategies and uses & gratifications theory. The methods used in the study are 4 focus group interviews and one informant interview. The members of the focus groups where within the age range 18-29 years and lived in the city of Falun.

This thesis investigates in which way principles and theories of usability is revelant when evaluating interactive systems for children aged 10-12. It also investigates whether there are specific factors that you should keep in mind while developing interactive products for the targeted group.The results of the qualitative study shows that priciples and theories of usability is relevant when evaluating interactive systems for the targeted group. However there is one concept that is more significant than the others. Our study shows that our targeted group is sensitive to time-consuming activities such as loading times etc. which has to do with the efficiency of the system.

ganization of knowledge at a museum library: Library of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm in the 20th and the early 21st century [65][pdf.gif] The purpose of this masters thesis is to investigate the organization of knowledge at the Library of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm during the 20th and the early 21st century. The investigation is focusing on the development of the organization of knowledge, of the catalogues, of the classification system and of the Information retrieval. The thesis examines the factors which force the development of the activity at the library and of the organization of knowledge. The study uses a qualitative approach which is based on investigations of different types of catalogues, of the electronic database, of the classification system, of the subject indexing and on interviews. A describing analysis is used.

The aim of this thesis is to describe and critically investigate eight different evaluations of the retrieval effectiveness of webbased search engines. The questions to be answered in this investigation are: - What kind of relevance judgements have been used? - Which criteria have been used when judging the relevance of a document? - Which measures have been used? - How many queries have been used? - How were the queries constructed? - What document cut-off value has been used? - Has hypothes testing been applied? - What kind of webbased search engines have been included in the evaluations? The study showed that although the evaluations investigate the same phenomena, they are very different from each other in certain aspects. Generally the study showed that precision is the preferred measure in comparison to recall in the chosen evaluation even though all the included evaluations have constructed unique formulas for calculating precision. Some attempts to measure relative recall have been performed but they all suffer from different defects.

The main purpose of this thesis has been to investigate librarians opinions about the need for and possibility to use non-roman script in library catalogues. We have also investigated the routines of handling materials in non-roman scripts in two Swedish libraries. The investigation was made in the light of the recent shift in character set in the Swedish National Library Catalogue Libris. This change will enable use of multiple writing systems in the future.Our findings are that a multicultural society requires special consideration to the needs of citizens who speak other languages than the majority of the population. This becomes difficult when the languages spoken have a different writing system than the one used by the majority.