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UBC Theses and Dissertations
Information clues : content analysis of document representations retrieved by the Web search engines Altavista, Infoseek Ultra, Lycos and Open text index Epp, Mary Anne
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to identify and quantify the information clues found in the document representations in the World Wide Web environment. This study uses three topics to find document representations: custom publishing, distance education, and tactile graphics. Four Web search engines are used: AltaVista, InfoSeek Ultra, Lycos, and Open Text Index. The findings of the random sample show that the search engines produce little duplication in their display of the results. Just over half of the cases reveal information clues about the document's authorship, origin, format or subject. The summary field shows the highest number of information clues. The title and Uniform Resource Locator fields do not contain many information clues. Few of the fields contain clues about the authorship of the documents. Topical relevance is questionable in many of the cases. The study recommends further research on the comparison of search engines, on the study of searches on the Web for commercial, academic and personal topics, and on information seeking behaviors relating to Web searching. Recommendations are made for Web training and Web page design to assist users in finding relevant information more quickly.
Item Metadata
Title |
Information clues : content analysis of document representations retrieved by the Web search engines Altavista, Infoseek Ultra, Lycos and Open text index
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Creator | |
Publisher |
University of British Columbia
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Date Issued |
1997
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Description |
The purpose of this thesis is to identify and quantify the information clues found in the
document representations in the World Wide Web environment. This study uses three
topics to find document representations: custom publishing, distance education, and
tactile graphics. Four Web search engines are used: AltaVista, InfoSeek Ultra, Lycos,
and Open Text Index. The findings of the random sample show that the search engines
produce little duplication in their display of the results. Just over half of the cases reveal
information clues about the document's authorship, origin, format or subject. The
summary field shows the highest number of information clues. The title and Uniform
Resource Locator fields do not contain many information clues. Few of the fields contain
clues about the authorship of the documents. Topical relevance is questionable in many of
the cases. The study recommends further research on the comparison of search engines,
on the study of searches on the Web for commercial, academic and personal topics, and
on information seeking behaviors relating to Web searching. Recommendations are made
for Web training and Web page design to assist users in finding relevant information more
quickly.
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Extent |
6108504 bytes
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Genre | |
Type | |
File Format |
application/pdf
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Language |
eng
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Date Available |
2009-03-10
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Provider |
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
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Rights |
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.
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DOI |
10.14288/1.0087720
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URI | |
Degree | |
Program | |
Affiliation | |
Degree Grantor |
University of British Columbia
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Graduation Date |
1997-05
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Campus | |
Scholarly Level |
Graduate
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Aggregated Source Repository |
DSpace
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Item Media
Item Citations and Data
Rights
For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use.