Competency E
Design, query and evaluate information retrieval systems
Information is useless without a way to access it. Because of this it is vital for information professionals to understand information retrieval systems. These systems are the user's only portal to information and their only guide through the vast reservoirs of data available. A poor information retrieval system can mean the desired information is not retrieved, which can lead to frustrated and unhappy patrons. A system that is confusing or hard to navigate might never get used. An information professional should understand both the basic internal and external structure of a system, and also know how to search it.
Design
One aspect of design is the façade that the user is presented with, which is often a Web site. A good interface should be clear, straightforward and easy to use, but also contain enough information that users can find what they're looking for. However, design also refers to the internal structure of a system or database. How data is stored affects how it can be retrieved, and data that isn't stored well may never be found. This structure also needs to be clear, in order to facilitate maintenance and updates.
Query
Most information retrieval systems have multiple ways to search for data. Figuring out the best way to search for a particular kind of information is an important skill. Being able to search systematically and efficiently can save time. This requires an understanding of how a particular system catalogues its data, including keywords, subject headings, and full text searching.
Evaluate
Once a system is in place, it is important to be able to evaluate it. When designing a system, its easy to get caught up in the back end and not think about how it would look to someone who knows nothing about it. How well does it do what it was designed to do? How easy is it to use? How confusing would it be for a first-time user? Questions such as these need to be considered in order to make sure the system is serving its purpose.
The first piece of evidence I chose is the SQL database and accompanying Web page my group created in my database management class. Over the course of the semester we built a full database from scratch, using SQL commands to form the structure and populate it with data, and a combination of XHTML, XSL, and XSQL for display. It took many weeks of trial and error before we decided on the entities and attributes shown in the dependency chart and the relationships displayed in E-R diagram, both of which I have included in the overview. All members of the group contributed equally to the design and structure of the database. We also worked together to create the Web pages, but the basic design and layout of the site, including the graphic and the font styles, were created by me. My goal was to create something simple that could showcase the different dynamic pages we needed to display. The design was flexible enough that we could modify it to accommodate the data, but was consistent enough to give the site coherency.
The second piece of evidence is one of the exercises I did for my class on online searching. For this exercise we were given a search topic from another student in the class. We had to choose which databases out of the many we had used that semester would best suit the topic, and then perform a comprehensive search. The databases had different interfaces and structures, and searching the four I chose took multiple search strategies in order to be thorough. The Dialog interface had to be searched solely with Boolean operators, while many of the other interfaces offered menus and checkboxes that supplied the operators, which allowed more intuitive searching. However, one advantage the Dialog interface had was proximity searching; the other databases had no way to specify that the search terms should be found near each other when doing a full text search. The different systems also presented the search results in different ways. I had to review the results and present the ones I thought best applied to the topic.
The third piece of evidence is an evaluation of the Livermore Public Library's Web site that I did as part of my class on interface design. I evaluated the site for clarity and ease of use. I focused on the layout, navigation, online catalog, and help screens. I found the site to be overall well organized, but some areas, such as the databases and the news and periodicals search, were hard to find and navigate. I also thought improvements could be made to the help pages to make them easier to understand at a glance.
If I were doing the evaluation now, after having spent two years working in the Livermore Public Library system as a clerk, I would give the organization of the site a much lower rating. Although improvements have been made, such as placing a link to "search for articles" on the main page, there are several sections of the site that even library employees have trouble finding and using. For example, the pages listing the library's new acquisitions are hidden under the generic title of "Reader's Room," where most patrons don't think to look. In addition, the page with links to the accelerated reader lists, which elementary school students and parents frequently need to access, is easier to find using a Google search than using the site's navigation. From my own experiences and from my conversations with patrons, I suspect much of the site never gets used.