This thesis is focusing on how global and local search engines retrieve information from the local domain. The three search engines tested are the global search engines Yahoo, Ask.com and the local search engine Web Wombat. The questions we examined were: which search engine has the best retrieval effectiveness? Could there be other reasons than retrieval effectiveness, to choosing a local search engine?For our test we constructed 20 questions related to Australia.We chose to divide the questions into topics like nature, sports and culture. For all questions we evaluated the relevance of the first 20 hits.

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.

This thesis compares four relevance feedback methods. The Rocchio and Ide dec-hi algorithms for the vector space model and the binary independence model and Okapi BM25 within the probabilistic framework. This is done in a custom-made Information Retrieval system utilizing a collection containing 131 896 LA-Times articles which is part of the TREC ad-hoc collection. The methods are compared on two grounds, using only the relevance information from the 20 highest ranked documents from an initial search and also by using all available relevance information. Although a significant effect of choice of method could be found on the first ground, post-hoc analysis could not determine any statistically significant differences between the methods where Rocchio, Ide dec-hi and Okapi BM25 performed equivalent.

This thesis was built on a practical work for LM Ericsson Data AB and deals with how toexamine an information need for a limited department within the corporation using aqualitative interview method.The thesis deals with how to search for requested information on the Internet and the WorldWide Web (WWW). It contains a model and a method for evaluation of search engines onthe World Wide Web, and 16 search engines which primarily indexes the World Wide Webare being evaluated..

The web has made an incredible amount of unorganized information available to anyone. There are search engines that help us structuring the information, but it is still difficult to find what you search for on the web. The purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate whether the already existing techniques for automatic indexing are suited for the new information retrieval context on the web and how the choice to support these techniques, or not, affects the search results. This is examined through a literature study on automatic indexing and other related concepts, such as information retrieval and information searching on the web in order to get a theoretical frame to the work and by an observation of the search engine HotBot to approach the purpose of the thesis. The observation is carried out by searching HotBot's database and investigating the search results in order to try to identify patterns that can reveal something about how HotBot's automatic indexing is done.

Computer Forensics investigations have become more and more common while investigating IT-related issues. From experience, hard disks, USB thumb, memory sticks contains information that might be useful. Computer Forensics is regulary conducted by Police, Customs, Tax investigators but also within private companies and organisations. However, there are areas within the storage device that are not part of the organisied structure that a file system gives. The reason for that might be that the information has been erased by intention, a virus destroyed the file system and so on.

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.

Computer Forensics investigations have become more and more common while investigating IT-related issues. From experience, hard disks, USB thumb, memory sticks contains information that might be useful. Computer Forensics is regulary conducted by Police, Customs, Tax investigators but also within private companies and organisations. However, there are areas within the storage device that are not part of the organisied structure that a file system gives. The reason for that might be that the information has been erased by intention, a virus destroyed the file system and so on.

This essay is about testing the validity of an article written by Jonas Löwgren, called The use qualities of digital design. The study we have executed is about testing the featured qualities of digital design in the article on two search systems located in the library of Stockholm University and Södertörn University respectively to see how they are able to be applied on search systems. To acquire the information for the study, we handed out a written inquire among users of those systems. The result of this quantitative study shows us that many that five of Löwgrens qualities is likely to be present on the systems. Our conclusion is that five of these are appliable on search systems.

The aim of this thesis was to study librarians approach upon reference questions and available resources and also to find out if there is any connection between the nature of the reference question and the choice of resource. The purpose was also to give a deeper understanding of the reference work. Nine librarians were given ten reference questions and their reference work was tape recorded. The study was completed with seven interviews sent by email. Some of the reflections were translated under the headlines of form, subject, time, language and availability.

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.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate new knowledge about how children search for library material and which strategies they use, and if the latest research gives any answers whether we should adapt systems and services or teach information seeking in a better way. In this thesis knowledge is understood as research publications but also results from projects in library practise, and studies concerning children 6 to 18 years old are included. The method used is a knowledge survey. We have gathered and evaluated documentation from different sources like citation and reference databases within the field of library and information science. The result implicates that there are, both in old and new documentation, three main search strategies children use in their search for information in a library context; they browse, they search in library catalogues and they use some sort of reference service.

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 purpose of this study is to examine the retrieval performance of three search engines, specialized in retrieving news articles: News Index, Excite News Search and Ananova. Thirty questions, grouped into three categories – politics, economy and sports, were used and the first twenty documents for each question were examined. The questions used were designed to be as current as possible and efforts were made to perform the searches with as little time span as possible between each search engine. The precision of the search engines was determined for each of the questions as well as for each category and for the combined categories. In measuring precision an average was calculated, intended to favour search engines that place its relevant documents early in the ranked list.

The web is getting more and more characterized by personalization. Big socialnetworks like Facebook as well as the leading search engine Google increasingly usepersonalization algorithms to tailor the information that they present to users. All inorder to make the information more relevant and engaging for the end consumer. Howdoes this personalization affect journalists who increasingly search the web as a partof their journalistic research? In this essay we have looked at the effects thatpersonalization has on the journalists of tomorrow by conducting a survey amongstudents of journalism.