Dear Blog Readers – whoever you may be – today I met a librarian I wish could be my real life friend.
She was funny, had great little phrases, fashionable, and most importantly knowledgable! Aside from my new found appreciation for those who help others and help preserve our history (like archivists), I also found how she taught us to be extremely effective. She did mention before class that she was going to teach us in a way that research suggests would be most effective, but I found myself way more involved in the completion of games!
Source: Gifsoup.com
GAME FACE.
As Celine and I ran from her to our spot and back 15 times, we collected various exercises that ultimately (we theorize) taught us how to produce the annotation part of an annotated bibliography (yet to be confirmed). However, I found myself enjoying this… and in a way I was pleasantly surprised yet disturbed by my utter amusement way! I found myself engaging with the librarian and asking questions that covered more than just the small colored handouts. One question I particularly found interesting, in that it really dissects the databases, is “what does sort by relevance really mean?”
Source: Leslie Akin
This brought me back to my BEAM and Tirabassi days…. (oh how long ago that was!) and reminded me that how sources are organized affect my selectivity. So, I decided to do some outside-of-the-class research on what relevance really means.
The kind librarian said “what the database finds relevant” but that did not suffice my hunger!
Below are some definitions I found:
-Relevance refers to the connection the information in the catalog database and the search string you’ve entered and the search filters (if any) you’ve chosen.
-A database record is “relevant” to your keywords because the keywords appear in the record. The more times your keywords appear in a record, the more relevant that database record is considered to be.
–Hard Core Definition: The document actually answers the question or solves the problem which caused you to perform the search to begin with.
–User Understandable Definition: It is readily apparent to the end-user why the search engine retrieved this document.
(Thanks to effectivedatabase.com & searchtechnologies.com)
I resonate most with the second of the definitions I compiled. To me, relevance is about number of occurrences – that’s why it is so important to pic your key words WISELY and CORRECTLY – it affects the searches that appear, the order they appear, and how you ultimately judge the sources in your analysis / compilation.