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 thesis is to examine how academic librarians seek information for themselves and for others, and what differences exist. The terms self-generated and imposed information seeking is used to describe the two different types of information seeking. Step 2 ? define and understand the problem, step 3 ? choose a search system and step 4 ? formulate a query of Marchionini?s information-seeking model forms the basis of the theoretical framework, which is supplemented with Soergel and Katz. Qualitative interviews with eight academic librarians were conducted and analyzed in order to gather empirical facts.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how academic librarians seek information for themselves and for others, and what differences exist. The terms self-generated and imposed information seeking is used to describe the two different types of information seeking. Step 2 ? define and understand the problem, step 3 ? choose a search system and step 4 ? formulate a query of Marchionini?s information-seeking model forms the basis of the theoretical framework, which is supplemented with Soergel and Katz. Qualitative interviews with eight academic librarians were conducted and analyzed in order to gather empirical facts.

The buying decision process describes how the consumer makes a purchase decision through a rational process (Markin, 1979) and an understanding for how consumers make a purchase decision can according to Sands et al. (2010) be obtained by increased knowledge for the Information search process (the second part of the buying decision process) before a purchase. Today?s society offers great opportunity to obtain information (Rahim & Clemens, 2012; Bawden & Robinson, 2009) and by that there are in other words good opportunities for a rational acting by the consumers. However, there are factors working against that consumers act rationally and seek information prior to their purchases primarily in the form of the concept of information overload (Bawden & Robinson, 2009) which claims that consumers are limited in their Information search because there is too much information but also other factors such as lack of time (Wood & Neal, 2009) and ability to find information (Slegers et al.

This paper is a comparing study of the retrieval effectiveness of the search engines Google, Google Scholar and Scirus. The aim is to find out how good they are at retrieving relevant academic material in the research-field of Library and Information science. The thirty search questions where based on actual information needs collected from exams within the field of Library and Information Science. This method was used to prevent that none of the search engines were given an advantage because of construction of the information needs. The first twenty retrieved documents on the retrieval lists are examined for academic content and relevance.

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.

This report examines the possibility of optimizing troubleshooting log files generated when constructing new Volvo trucks. Errors occur when CAD models are stored and managed by the versioning system PDMLink. By developing a new diagnostic tool, Log Search, the troubleshooting process is automated and thereby streamlines the current manual search..

The aim of this master thesis was to examine the European Commission's information resources from a user perspective in order to clarify the needs and circumstances of the search of EU-information among students at Örebro University. 41 students participated in a survey, and four of them was interviewed. On the basis of Pendelton- and Chatmans theories of information behaviour in small worlds, it were assumed that the students' education and citizenship in the European Union affected their needs and the search of EU information.The study showed that the students needs for EU-related information has increased, with the current education, but also been linked to earlier educations. The students Citizens need were mainly associated with elections such as the EMU-election, but also in some cases to a need of the general knowledge.A review of the European Commission's information resources were made with an emphasis on European Documentation Centre, EDC. The survey showed that most students used the EDC and the EU-databases that was made available by the European Commission through the EDC and the university library but were not aware that they used EDC.The survey also showed that students made use of familiar sources and resources when they searched the EU-information, such as the library's regular database list, the library catalogue and search engine on the internet are not requested of other resources.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to, through user studies, analyse whether Carol C. Kuhlthaus Information search model is applicable in a Swedish school. Furthermore, the guidance that the students may receive from the teacher and/or school librarian is analysed. Answers are sought to the following questions: · How do the students perceive their information seeking? · How do the librarian and/or teacher support the students during their information seeking process? The study is based on a qualitative method of approach, through interviews with four informants: a librarian, a teacher and two pupils.

The main object for this thesis is to study how students in library and information science at Högskolan i Borås search and valuate documents in the process of writing a paper. The study is based on a series of interviews with 12 students. Our methodology is also based on studies of their final product. The goal of the study was to map out how the students make their decisions during their search process. We studied the students use of search words, relevance judgements and how their need for information changed trough out the writing of their paper.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the metadata format Dublin Core is applied within five Swedish search engines. The objects of the investigation are Rättskällan, studera.nu, Svenska miljönätet, Svesök and the web catalogue of Uppsala University. Dublin Core is a flexible and adjustable format, which can be used in many different ways and in various projects depending on the target groups and objectives of the activity. We compare the differences and similarities between the five search engines concerning their usage of metadata in general and Dublin Core in particular. The material of the investigation consists of metadata records, which are collected by a robot and examined manually.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and compare the retrieval effectiveness of two search engines on the Internet: Svensk Medicin and Google Scholar. Svensk Medicin is a medicine-specific search engine and Google Scholar specialises in indexing scholarly material. A set of 20 questions in four categories were used to conduct the searches with the search engines. Genuine medical information needs were selected from a question collection provided by the television program Fråga doktorn. The relevance of the first 10 retrieved documents was judged by using a binary scale and the measure used was precision.

This thesis considers the problems associated with searches in insufficiently geographically tagged data. The thesis was carried out at Booli Search Technologies AB, a company developing a search engine for the Swedish real estate market.The aim of the thesis is to identify some areas of possible improvements of the company?s existing technical platform, perform a benchmarking among similar services, suggest possible solutions and lastly, build a prototype from one of the suggested solutions.The thesis starts out with defining the problems that the search engine faces: some areas are not possible to perform searches on, the users are not presented with the full search result that they expect, some results are placed incorrectly on the map associated with the search results and results are also not described with enough geographical information. These problems are due to the fact that the data retrieved at the indexing stage in the company?s information retrieval process are insufficient and incomplete.As a result of a benchmarking process and after discussing the results, severalinteresting solutions were identified.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the retrieval performance of two search engines, Yahoo! News and Sesam, specialized on indexing news articles in Swedish. Thirty search questions were used in this study, divided into three different categories: domestic news, amusement and sport. Precision has been calculated both for the 30 search questions as a total and for the three categories as well. Precision was calculated at every DCV-level and then divided with the number of search questions used, in an attempt to reach an average measure.

AbstractThis study examines the technologies appropriate in developing back-and solutions for search-driven user interfaces of e-commerce sites. The study is based on existing research in search-driven user interfaces of e-commerce sites from a design point of view, but instead the focus of this study lies within a back-end perspective. This choice of focus is a result of the gap that was encountered within research and other literature when it comes to general advice in how e-commerce sites best should build back-end solutions to support search driven user interfaces. The technologies that have been examined and compared are traditional relational databse management systems (RDMS) and the newer so called No-SQL database management systems, and also traditional search engines and the newer variant s of search engines. The study concludes that in some cases it is appropriate to combine traditional and newer technologies when it comes to databases, while the comparison of search engines indicates that there are some newer search en gines that have the ability to meet more of the needs that can be identified on the back-end solutions.Primary data consists of interviews made ?face to face? with experts on the subject and questionnaires addressed to selected e-commerce companies via e-mail.