Faculty Publications

Comparative Study Of Tools For Finding Business Information On The World Wide Web: A Case Study

Document Type

Article

Keywords

Comparative studies, End users, Research institutes, Search engines

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Journal of Business and Finance Librarianship

Volume

4

Issue

2

First Page

3

Last Page

29

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of leading Web search engines in finding relevant business information sought by researchers at a university-based industrial lubricants research center. The author selected tools to study and defined evaluation criteria. Staff from the Ag-Based Industrial Lubricants Research Program, University of Northern Iowa, provided 15 topics on which they need current information. The author created and executed simple mode searches to find material on these topics. The research center staff rated the relevance of the first 10 results for each query for each search tool. The staff also rated the overall effectiveness of each tool in meeting the information need for each query. The tools were rated on the relevancy of results, number of duplicates, and number of inactive links. Sites getting the top relevancy rating were categorized. © 1999 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Department

Rod Library

Original Publication Date

12-1-1998

DOI of published version

10.1300/J109v04n02_02

Link to Full Text

Comments?

Share

COinS