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Richard Evans Information Retrieval System Evaluation The Bodleian Library services the University of Oxford and ho sts one of the most highly regarded library websites. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/. Their website is home to a comprehensive informational retrieval (IR) systems that acts as a portal the numerous available resources offered at the library. Moreover, Bodleian is also currently upgrading their IR system with new search and social media features. The main page begins with a search box that gives the end user the option to search from either Oxford’s libraries (SOLO), a newly implemented search tool called OxLIP+, e- Journals and Websites. Each database had its own separate webpage and functionality. For the purposes of my inquiry, I restricted my search to only SOLO and OxLIP+. For my search, I wanted to find a real world answer to a question that I have been  pondering for a long time, the meaning of life. I am currently conducting research on the Theory of Everything, and I want to incorporate philosophical and religious scholarship into my already existing computational research. My goal from my initial search was determine the prevalent authorities and gather broad subject headings about the subject matter. I also wanted to learn advanced technical terminologies to help me develop better search terms. My goal will be to find basic books

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Richard Evans

Information Retrieval System Evaluation

The Bodleian Library services the University of Oxford and hosts one of the most highly

regarded library websites. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/. Their website is home to a

comprehensive informational retrieval (IR) systems that acts as a portal the numerous

available resources offered at the library. Moreover, Bodleian is also currently upgrading

their IR system with new search and social media features.

The main page begins with a search box that gives the end user the option to search from

either Oxford’s libraries (SOLO), a newly implemented search tool called OxLIP+, e-

Journals and Websites. Each database had its own separate webpage and functionality.

For the purposes of my inquiry, I restricted my search to only SOLO and OxLIP+.

For my search, I wanted to find a real world answer to a question that I have been

 pondering for a long time, the meaning of life. I am currently conducting research on the

Theory of Everything, and I want to incorporate philosophical and religious scholarship

into my already existing computational research.

My goal from my initial search was determine the prevalent authorities and gather broad

subject headings about the subject matter. I also wanted to learn advanced technical

terminologies to help me develop better search terms. My goal will be to find basic books

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on the subject then move on to more complex journal articles. To start my search, I just

typed “meaning of life” in natural language.

My first SOLO search returned 643 results. Since I didn’t provide any limiters, my search

included everything in the databases that had the string “meaning of life” anywhere in the

document or title. Further, since I didn’t restrict the media types, many of the results were

movies and audio recordings. Although this query produced an overwhelming amount of 

documents, I was confident that I would be able to narrow my search because the site

 provided plenty of suggested searches and limiters.

The results page consists of a three paned layout screen. The search results are located

the middle pane with highlighted links to additional information and feedback about the

result. On the far right pane, the number of versions for each result is listed. All of the

results in my search were just publications of the same work in different languages. This

also included movies and audio recordings.

On the far left pane, were options to narrow the search by: topic, library, creation date,

creator and resource site. There was also a user suggested searches based on the original

inquiry. In my search, this pane offered a search by the authors/creator and by subject.

All the suggestions in the later pertained the Monty Python film - The Meaning of Life.

This was far from the result that I was looking for.

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I then decided to narrow down my inquiry by using a Boolean search. The meaning of 

life in quotes produced only 153 results. Although this effectively grouped my search

terms to one exact string, there still remained a lot of other results that didn’t represent,

what I considered, was a serious inquiry into the meaning of life. I then added “NOT

comedy” to the search string, which removed all the Monty Hall references and gave me

more relevant search results. In addition, this change also improved the Suggested/ New

Searches pane. That now provided better guidance of where I might search to find my

answer. However, although the search accepted Boolean searches, it didn’t provide a

guide to help users navigate commands.

The site provides an advance search option that allows the user to filter the types of 

media included in the search. Unfortunately, I could only select one type of media at a

time, so to search both books and journals took required two separate searches. But this

drastically improved the precision of my searches in both instances –including the

Suggested/ New Search pane.

At this point, I wanted to try the new OxLIP+ function. The search functions are not very

intuitive. I had to first carefully read the instructions to figure out how to conduct a

search. And then afterwards, none of my searches produced any relevant results. My only

result was from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. To be fair, OxLIP+ is still

under construction, but I don’t know why something so unfinished was being offered.

I felt my search experience was adequate –as long as I stayed within the SOLO system.

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The system feels very brisk and fairly intuitive. It’s also very evident this is a very

 powerful and well-designed IR system. On the other hand, the system seems disjointed a

 patched together. Not all of the functional pieces are uniformed and differ greatly in

quality. The user experience differs greatly from function to function. But overall I think 

the search was more than adequate in helping me find the materials that I was seeking.