Iranian Journal of Information Science and Technology

Copyright © 2003 SHIRAZ REGIONAL LIBRARY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Vol 1,  No 1,  ISSN 1726-8125, 2003

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE END USERS’ AND THE INFORMATION EXPERTS’ SEARCHING OF RLST’S DATABASES IN TERMS OF SEARCH TIME, RECALL AND PRECISION RATIOS

J. MEHRAD, Ph. D., Dept. of Library and Information Sciences, Shiraz University, Shiraz, I. R. of Iran

 Abstract

In this study, a comparison is made between the results of the end users’ searching of RLST’s databases and those of the information experts’ searching in terms of search time, recall ratio and precision ratio. The study is primarily tasked with comparing the results retrieved through the three different search methods of direct, indirect and mixed. Five of RLST’s information experts as well as RLST’s direct users constituted the study’s sample population. The research method and the data collection procedure used were semi-experimental method, observation and a questionnaire respectively. To test the hypotheses and to find an answer to the research questions, variance analysis, correlation coefficient as well as f, t and z tests were used at α = 0.05.

 Keywords - End user, Database, Regional Library of Science and Technology, Recall, Precision, Online Retrieval Service

email: dean@srlst.com