Courses like Repérage des ressources informationnelles (ISI 5704) and Research and Evaluation in Information Studies (ISI 5307) provided me with the knowledge I needed to strengthen my information retrieval abilities. Not only did these courses require a practical demonstration of these abilities but ensured that I understood theoretical concepts behind them, such as what a strong search engine requires, what technologies might be at work, what methods one can use to obtain more relevant results to search queries, and what research methods are commonly used in information professional fields. 

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Knowledge of Search Engines 

 

     Repérage des ressources informationnelles (ISI 5704) taught by Andre Vellino required the class to understand information retrieval tools, information sources, and retrieval techniques. It was through my first assignment, midterm evaluation, and final dissertation that I was able to demonstrate my understanding of these learning objectives. I utilized class discussions on what makes a strong search tool to help me complete one of my first major assignments, an evaluation of different search engines. I researched the results that could be found when searching for various topics, including information on supervised injection sites and their effects on health, information on indigenous populations, and information on an existing time machine art patent on Google, the University of Saskatchewan’s Indigenous Studies Portal Research Tool (iPortal), and the Canadian Patent Database. With an understanding of important aspects of search engines from class, I was able to provide an evaluation of these search engines based on interface, its ability to retrieve relevant results, and its search options or filters. 

     The midterm evaluation for this course required me to demonstrate further understanding of search engine functions and resource retrieval tools as it tested my knowledge of how search engines can evaluate the relevance of search results (including concepts like link analysis, query processing, tf.idf weighting, query brokers and document-at-a-time scoring), counting bi-grams in documents, how to determine the five most frequent words in the entirety of Alexandre Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristowith text analyser programs and how these results could be attributed to concepts such as Zipf’s law, understanding Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), and how to conduct ‘backward chaining’ methods. This evaluation allowed me to take concepts seen in class and apply them practically to ensure that I had a working understanding of search engine tools and techniques, something that will surely assist me in my future role as a librarian when assisting in resource retrieval.

       My final assignment for ISI 5704 asked me to pretend I was assisting a client in discovering information on global warming, and required me to demonstrate that I understood the process of information retrieval, such as understanding the client’s needs, conducting an interview to clarify precisely what they were searching for, the search process itself and the evaluation of the resources that I was able to find for this client. For this assignment, I began by noting that this would most likely happen in a library setting given my career goals, and provided an in-depth interview to identify if my client was interested in printed resources, online resources, or other multimedia resources, and what the purpose of this research was (in this instance, I noted it was for academic purposes rather than their own interest). After hypothetically providing my client with some preliminary resources, I proceeded to discuss the importance of the Ottawa Public Library’s BiblioCommons database and how it could assist my client further. With an understanding of what makes a strong search engine from class discussions, I evaluated BiblioCommons’ search options, filters to narrow searches, its ability to provide related results, and some additional helpful tools such as the rating of each resource on the database and its ‘For Later’ option that allows clients to save their results to their accounts for later viewing. I then utilized this database to retrieve real resources on climate change and human impact to show how my retrieval process was strong enough to obtain many resources for my hypothetical client. 

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     I also utilize my understanding of search engines when assisting customers at the Ottawa Public Library. Often, in my roles in Customer Service Assistant and Public Service Assistant positions, I am tasked with helping patrons find resources for interest or for school projects. While I always start with resources that can be found in the library, I generally direct them to some additional reliable information online, and encourage them to stay with me while I look up further resources in order to watch how I evaluate the relevancy and trustworthiness of my search results. 

 

Research Methods

 

     Research and Evaluation in Information Studies (ISI 5307), taught by Jonathan Dorey, focused primarily on understanding the research process and how qualitative and quantitative research methods are being used in the field of information studies. One assignment for this course required me to provide a research proposal on Discovering What Research Methods Libraries use to Gauge Community Impact. Academic articles discussing library value and how to measure it showed that despite the importance of libraries, there is a lack of information about them in many studies and reports. My proposal served to outline this issue and suggest a potential solution built on qualitative research methods seen in class. I began by studying qualitative research methods discussed by other academics in articles and journals in order to fully understand these methods, then proposed that similar research methods for gauging community impact be collected via interviews of library staff members. As ISI 5307 had emphasized the importance of proper research methods, my proposals for staff interviews followed a certain etiquette, including consent forms, and questions that are both open ended and non-manipulative. As ISI 5307 also discussed the importance of software used in some research methods, such as NVivo or Atlas.ti, I proposed that my collected data by analysed by these or other software meant specifically for processing qualitative data in order to reduce any issues with human error. This class provided me with important knowledge of the different research methods that are currently being used in information fields, the ways in which research is conducted, where some research issues still impact libraries, and provided me with an interest in potentially helping to fix these issues in my future career.