Comparison of three web-scale discovery services for health sciences research*

Autor: Kelly K O'Brien, Rosie Hanneke
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2016
Předmět:
Service (systems architecture)
020205 medical informatics
Libraries
Medical
Computer science
Abstracting and Indexing
Information Seeking Behavior
MEDLINE
lcsh:Medicine
Information Storage and Retrieval
Context (language use)
Health Informatics
02 engineering and technology
Library and Information Sciences
Web-Scale Discovery Services
World Wide Web
Medical Subject Headings
Information seeking behavior
Terminology as Topic
Controlled vocabulary
0202 electrical engineering
electronic engineering
information engineering
Humans
Relevance (information retrieval)
Implementation
Information retrieval
05 social sciences
lcsh:R
Subject (documents)
Databases
Bibliographic
lcsh:Z
lcsh:Bibliography. Library science. Information resources
Databases as Topic
Papers
0509 other social sciences
050904 information & library sciences
Medical Informatics
Zdroj: Journal of the Medical Library Association, Vol 104, Iss 2 (2016)
Popis: Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative effectiveness of three web-scale discovery (WSD) tools in answering health sciences search queries.Methods: Simple keyword searches, based on topics from six health sciences disciplines, were run at multiple real-world implementations of EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), Ex Libris’s Primo, and ProQuest’s Summon. Each WSD tool was evaluated in its ability to retrieve relevant results and in its coverage of MEDLINE content.Results: All WSD tools returned between 50%–60% relevant results. Primo returned a higher number of duplicate results than the other 2WSD products. Summon results were more relevant when search terms were automatically mapped to controlled vocabulary. EDS indexed the largest number of MEDLINE citations, followed closely by Summon. Additionally, keyword searches in all 3 WSD tools retrieved relevant material that was not found with precision (Medical Subject Headings) searches in MEDLINE.Conclusions: None of the 3 WSD products studied was overwhelmingly more effective in returning relevant results. While difficult to place the figure of 50%–60% relevance in context, it implies a strong likelihood that the average user would be able to find satisfactory sources on the first page of search results using a rudimentary keyword search. The discovery of additional relevant material beyond that retrieved from MEDLINE indicates WSD tools’ value as a supplement to traditional resources for health sciences researchers.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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