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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Recurso educativo Open Access |
| Language: | en |
| Published: |
1988
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED301208 |
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Table of Contents:
- An Evaluation of a Gateway System for Automated Online Database Selection. Hu, Chengren Academic Libraries Artificial Intelligence College Students Comparative Analysis Computer System Design Databases Educational Technology Higher Education Librarians Man Machine Systems Online Searching Online Systems Questionnaires Surveys Tables (Data) Technological Advancement This paper describes a study that was undertaken at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to compare the databases selected by 75 inexperienced student online searchers aided by an existing gateway system--INFOMASTER, a version of EASYNET--with databases selected manually by four experienced searchers who were reference librarians from four departmental libraries. The online searches were done in response to patron requests in the university library, and the topics searched were the same for both groups. The database selections of the librarians were then compared with the selections made by students using INFOMASTER to investigate the hypothesis of this research, i.e., the inexperienced searchers aided by the gateway would do as well as the experienced professional searchers in selecting databases likely to be the most productive in their yield of potentially relevant items. The comparison shows that database selection by INFOMASTER still depends heavily on human judgments, especially in the selection by searchers of the subject field in which a query falls. Suggestions for improving automated database selection systems with artificial intelligence techniques conclude the report. Appended are five tables displaying statistics and results of data analyses together with an example of database postings. (8 references) (CGD)