INLS 180 Day 15 Notes

March 1, 2004

 

Note most recent JASIST has several bibliometrics papers

 

  1. One minute papers

Main Points

Relevance is key ILS concept: indexing/aboutness, evaluation, ranking

There are absolute (classfications, systems, objective) or relative (user-centered, subjective) definitions of relevance

Possible relationships between relevance and quality (and authority)

Indexing is based on objective relevance

 

Questions

If relevance is strictly ‘relative’ how can we have effective retrieval systems (libraries, www)?

Can we ever get 100% recall and precision?  How close do we get?

Will transaction log metrics improve relevance metrics?

How does personal agreement with content affect relevance judgments? [against subjective]

Can a system determine quality?

Are there standards for quality?

Can we use non-binary concepts of relevance? 

 

2. A diversion:  Instead of trying to address retrieval as matching queries to docs with similarity measures that estimate relevance formally, bring the information seeker directly into the process.  Interactive interfaces and dynamic query examples.

 

3. One-minute paper

What was the big point you learned in class today?

What is the main, unanswered question you leave class with today?