Module 4 Task: Boolean Search

Task Objective

To gain an understanding of the boolean logic on which most search rules are based. 

Process

Using the keywords ‘Mountain, Biking, Europe’ again determine a search strategy for achieving:

• The biggest number of hits relating to these key words
• information most relevant to what you ACTUALLY wanted to look for!
• information coming only from university sources

Task Outcomes

Biggest Hits: To get the biggest number of hits relating to the key words I thought that using full Boolean to search OR would be most successful i.e Mountain OR Biking OR Europe., and indeed this was true, but if you ever needed proof that quality is better than quantity this is it… 

The results were very loose and generic i.e Wikipedia defs on Mountains and Europe as individual topics (but not on Biking…is there a heircachy I wonder?) essentially a huge number of returns (76,000,000) , but all of them were of little value in providing the information sought.

Best Hits: Here I combined searching for the keywords with AND, but combinined it with NOT as well as the most relevant return would involve excluding sites that would use similar language but be aimed at differing types of cycling. I also wanted to exclude racing sites, and commercial tour companies and just focus on getting information about good places to ride in europe i.e Mountain Biking Europe Trails-Cycling -Cycle -Race -Tours -Tour. 

The results of this search strategy were really good, returning a more reasonable 13,200 with site content much closer to what I was looking for and really highlighted how increasing search skills can save time and enhance the quality of information that is found. 

Educational Sources In this case I used the advanced search option in google and stipulated that the search should occur only within the domain .edu

The results of this were as expected, a low return and low relevancy. The sources found tended to have a brief mention of mountain biking in regards to extramural activities or trips for prospective students, however relevancy would have been much higher had the topic been different so I do think that the ablity to filter by domain is helpful.