This Master's thesis in Library and Information Science aims to explore if personal patterns can be detected in web-searching. It is based on a study where the search sessions of nine test persons were video-recorded, transcribed into logs and analysed.A major objective was to find out whether there is a correlation between individual searchers' personal attributes and their web search behaviour. The logs were therefore compared with the test persons' results in a learning style test (Kolb's Learning Style Inventory) and with interview answers about information behaviour and personal background.While several patterns were indeed discovered, none of them turned out to be strictly personal. The nine test persons could be divided into five types of searchers: the purely analytic searcher; the generally analytic searcher; the balanced searcher; the mixed searcher and the browser. All types of searchers were found to have the attribute learning style in common.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how different kinds of information seekers are evaluating information quality in the information flow online. To address the problem stated, qualitative interviews were carried out with a librarian as a reference person and a group consisting of journalists and scientists. The result of the study implies that the reference person is well aware of the strategies employed by her in the search process. However, the respondents are not aware of the strategies they are actually using. An explanation is the respondents lack of education in information seeking.

This is a master thesis from Uppsala University in collaboration with B Locket AB (more known as www.blocket.se). B Locket AB is a large ad-company from Sweden, located in Stockholm.Search engines on the market today are becoming more and more complex. When they were first introduced, they only had one function and that was to produce search results containing the string that the user had typed. Today, users want it to be able to spellcheck, produce more results and sort search results on specific fields as well. Preferably, all these features should not affect the performance as a whole.The reason to why these demands have come up is that users are getting more and more used to internet services as a whole and they want everything to be as easy as possible.The user ability has become a substantially more important area in the computer industry and this needs to be taken into account when it comes to B Locket AB and its search engine.

The Internet offers an abundance of information. This information is easy to access in technical terms, however it is difficult to find. At present there is a wide variety of search services to choose from. This master's thesis is about selecting the appropriate search service for a certain question. Are different types of services suitable for different types of questions, and if so, which services for which questions?To answer this, I have undertaken one theoretical and one empirical study.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate if the library can be a real partner for researchers in managing and dealing with their research information. In this study, six researchers have been interviewed about their problems with information management. This study uses the method Critical Incident Technique for the interviews with the researchers. This method focuses mainly on problems and what happens around those problems.

This thesis deals with subject-based hierarchical search-services on the World Wide Web. The purpose is to investigate how systems of this kind facilitate information retrieval through subject-based information seeking. Its starting point is taken from the study of texts and qualitative analyses of search-services on the World Wide Web. Important aspects and features of the Internet and the World Wide Web are explained as well. Three systems are examined: Mölndals Stadsbiblioteks Länkkatalog, Svesök, and Alta Vista.

The primary aim of this thesis is to examine female lawyers' relationships to information from different angles. The starting-point is that the legal information, retrieved from through different information sources, is not free from values and subjectivity. The commonly presumed objectivity of legal information is questioned, based on the fact that this kind of information has developed and changed historically in the context of, and in relation to, society. Another aim is to find out how the female lawyers experience their situation in a traditionally masculine working environment. Qualitative interviews have been carried out with seven female lawyers involving questions about their daily work about the sources that they are using.

The question whether controlled vocabulary or natural language free-text terms is the most effective search strategy has occupied researchers in LIS for many decades. This Masters thesis is an empirical study which aims to compare these two search strategies in LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts, an online bibliographic database. 22 topics from the discipline of Library and Information Science were constructed and out of each topic one query for each search strategy was formed. Queries in natural language were formed with terms from different sources, for example dictionaries, while queries in controlled vocabulary were built with terms from LISAs electronic thesaurus. The measures used in this study were precision, relative recall pooling method and overlap.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to understand how librarians develop their reference service. The purpose was to find patterns in how librarians work with reference questions. As a theoretical framework we have used research in the reference field. Where do the skills of the search process come from: education or experience? Answers were sought to the following questions: - How different are the search process in practice compared to theory? - Which similarities and differences are there among the informants? - How important was the education in comparison to the knowledge about the libraries collections? - How did the changes in the school system in 1993 influence reference education and what could the consequences be to the reference knowledge among librarians? We sent out a question form and a search question which was answered by 12 librarians in university and university college libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness on the European Unions official website EUROPA, depending on which language is used to formulate the search question. Our main concern were if you get access to the same information depending on which language is used to search information The European Union has so far eleven official languages, and with the forthcoming expansion with negotiations with thirteen new countries to affiliate to the union by May 1:st 2004, the official languages will be even more. We have made a comparison between Swedish and English, using 29 different topics from which we formulated 2x29 queries. The topics used were found at the Swedish Governments FAQ about the European Union, EUsvar. We wanted the topics to be as authentic as possible to avoid bias.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate on what perspective or perspectives university teachers and librarians at a medium-sized university in Sweden base their view on information literacy. More specifically, how do the respondents view their own information literacy and what opinions they have of their students? information literacy as professionals. Three perspectives are used to interpret the results, the sociocultural perspective, the phenomenographical perspective and the behavioristic perspective.The method used is semi structured interviews with three university teachers and three librarians.Both librarians and teachers emphasize the importance of information literacy, for themselves as well as for students. The information literacy of the librarians involves being well acquainted with the subjects of the students.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate how students at an upper secondary school for adults use school and public library when searching for information for school assignments. The focus in this investigation is on the feelings and experiences of the process of the information seeking and use. The focus is also on the students experiences of school and public libraries and the help they receive from them in learning. The method used is focus groups interviews. Two groups were interviewed.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how high school students (age 13 to 19) search for information on the web and in databases. Furthermore, it aims to look into how critical of sources they are. The questions asked was: how the students search for information in digital media? Which kind of sources do the students use? How they evaluate the information they find? Do they get any education in information retrieval and source evaluation? To answer these questions students were interviewed in groups about their information retrieval behavior. Furthermore two school librarians were interviewed about their experience of the students? information retrieval.During the interviews it was clear that the students had received quite sparse instructions on the subjects of information retrieval and criticism of the sources.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate three web-based search engines and compare the 10 first retrieved documents. We used the search engines Google, Yahoo! and Exalead. The evaluation is based upon 20 topics with strong polarized opinions and these have been derived from Swedish media and every day life. From these topics we have constructed the 20 queries used for searching. The 10 first documents are each placed in four different categories, For, Against, Neutral or Irrelevant.

The aim of the thesis was to provide further understanding on how Swedish consumers use the Internet as an information source in their purchase decision process. The subject was investigated from different perspectives: gender, product type and information type. The authors used a quantitative approach, and a survey (n=120) was conducted. It was concluded that men and women are equally influenced by traditional word-of-mouth, but more men than women search for product information online and they are more likely to let their purchase decision to be influenced by it. Women tend more to trust commercial sources.