Search results

Metaheuristic algorithms are classified into two categories namely: single-solution and population-based algorithms. Single-solution algorithms perform local search process by employing a single candidate solution trying to improve this solution in its neighborhood. In contrast, population-based algorithms guide the search process by maintaining multiple solutions located in different points of search space. However, the main drawback of single-solution algorithms is that the global optimum may not reach and it may get stuck in local optimum. On the other hand, population-based algorithms with several starting points that maintain the diversity of the solutions globally in the search space and results are of better exploration during the search process. In this paper more chance of finding global optimum is provided for single-solution-based algorithms by searching different regions of the search space.

In this method, different starting points in initial step, searching locally in neighborhood of each solution, construct a global search in search space for the single-solution algorithm.

The proposed method was tested based on three single-solution algorithms involving hill-climbing (HC), simulated annealing (SA) and tabu search (TS) algorithms when they were applied on 25 benchmark test functions. The results of the basic version of these algorithms were then compared with the same algorithms integrated with the global search proposed in this paper. The statistical analysis of the results proves outperforming of the proposed method. Finally, 18 benchmark feature selection problems were used to test the algorithms and were compared with recent methods proposed in the literature.

In this paper more chance of finding global optimum is provided for single-solution-based algorithms by searching different regions of the search space.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the efficacy of two approaches to finding articles on a topic by measuring student perceptions of the ease‐of‐use of the search process and the perceived relevancy of search results retrieved using both a single multidisciplinary database and a federated search tool.

Students are asked to search both a federated search tool and a single multidisciplinary database, record their searches and respond to a series of quantitative and qualitative questions regarding their experiences with searching both search tools.

Study results indicate a slight preference for federated searching over single database searching based on perceived relevancy of results and likeliness of future use. Study data supports equal promotion of single database searching and federated searching to undergraduate students.

The results of this paper have practical implications for reference and instruction librarians teaching undergraduate students and library users in general to find the most effective, efficient and manageable approach to finding articles on a topic.

Previous research comparing federated searching to other research methods uses prescribed topics outside of an actual class setting, while this is a naturalistic study in which students searched for articles on a research topic of their own choosing for a required research assignment. A previous study compared federated searching to navigating and searching numerous databases. This paper compares a federated search tool to a single multidisciplinary database.

The purpose of this paper is to aim at modelling the trails, which are search patterns with several search systems across the heterogeneous information environment. In addition, the author seeks to examine what kinds of trails occur in routine, semi-complex and complex tasks, and what barrier types occur during the trail-blazing.

The author used qualitative task-based approach with shadowing of six molecular medicine researchers during six months, and collected their web interaction logs. Data triangulation made this kind of detailed search system integration analysis possible.

Five trail patterns emerged: branches, chains, lists, singles and berrypicking trails. The berrypicking was typical to complex work tasks, whereas the branches were common in routine work tasks. Singles and lists were employed typically in semi-complex tasks. In all kinds of trails, the barriers occurred often during the interaction with a single system, but there was a considerable number of barriers with the malfunctioning system integration, and lacking integration features. The findings propose that the trails could be used to reduce the amount of laborious manual system integration, and that there is a need for support to explorative search process in berrypicking trails.

Research of information behaviour yielding to different types of search patters with several search systems during real-world work task performance in molecular medicine have not been published previously. The author presents a task-based approach how to model search behaviour patterns. The author discusses the issue of system integration, which is a great challenge in biomedical domain, from the viewpoints of information studies and search behaviour.

This paper describes an investigation of 20 different meta‐search engines. Their features were characterised and classified into six distinct categories based on their functionality and use. The most used features and unique features were specified and explained in detail. The findings of this study will benefit both meta‐search‐engine developers and ordinary search users.

This paper considers the classifications produced by application of the single linkage, complete linkage, group average and Ward clustering methods to the Keen and Cranfield document test collections. Experiments were carried out to study the structure of the hierarchies produced by the different methods, the extent to which the methods distort the input similarity matrices during the generation of a classification, and the retrieval effectiveness obtainable in cluster based retrieval. The results would suggest that the single linkage method, which has been used extensively in previous work on document clustering, is not the most effective procedure of those tested, although it should be emphasized that the experiments have used only small document test collections.

This paper reports the findings of a major study examining the overlap among results retrieved by three major web search engines. The goal of the research was to: measure the overlap across three major web search engines on the first results page overlap (i.e. share the same results) and the differences across a wide range of user defined search terms; determine the differences in the first page of search results and their rankings (each web search engine's view of the most relevant content) across single‐source web search engines, including both sponsored and non‐sponsored results; and measure the degree to which a meta‐search web engine, such as Dogpile.com, provides searchers with the most highly ranked search results from three major single source web search engines.

The authors collected 10,316 random Dogpile.com queries and ran an overlap algorithm using the URL for each result by query. The overlap of first result page search for each query was then summarized across all 10,316 to determine the overall overlap metrics. For a given query, the URL of each result for each engine was retrieved from the database.

The percent of total results unique retrieved by only one of the three major web search engines was 85 percent, retrieved by two web search engines was 12 percent, and retrieved by all three web search engines was 3 percent. This small level of overlap reflects major differences in web search engines retrieval and ranking results.

This study provides an important contribution to the web research literature. The findings point to the value of meta‐search engines in web retrieval to overcome the biases of single search engines.

The results of this research can inform people and organizations that seek to use the web as part of their information seeking efforts, and the design of web search engines.

This research is a large investigation into web search engine overlap using real data from a major web meta‐search engine and single web search engines that sheds light on the uniqueness of top results retrieved by web search engines.

The user interface, in broad terms, is the medium through which the user and the information come together. The types of searches a public access catalog (PAC) can perform are defined by the indexing strategy and retrieval software. The way the user's interest is communicated to the retrieval software and the way the results are communicated to the user is, by a more narrow definition, the interface software. Both the kinds of searches that can be performed by a variety of CD‐ROM PACs and how their workstations are used to accomplish the searches are considered.

In this article, the fifth in a series on microcomputer software for information storage and retrieval, test results of seven programs are presented and various properties and qualities of these programs are discussed. In this instalment of the series we discuss programs for information storage and retrieval which are primarily characterised by the properties of personal information managers (PIMs), hypertext programs, or best match and ranking retrieval systems. The programs reviewed in this issue are the personal information managers 3by5/RediReference, askSam, Dayflo Tracker, and Ize; Personal Librarian uses best match and ranking; the hypertext programs are Folio Views and the HyperKRS/HyperCard combination (askSam, Ize and Personal Librarian boast hypertext features as well). HyperKRS/HyperCard is only available for the Apple Macintosh. All other programs run under MS‐DOS; versions of Personal Librarian also run under Windows and some other systems. For each of the seven programs about 100 facts and test results are tabulated. The programs are also discussed individually.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for a target searching problem in a two-dimensional region with time constraints. The proposed model facilitates the search operation by minimizing the mission time and fuel usage, and the search operation is performed by a set of agents divided into a number of groups.

The authors have applied optimization techniques, Cartesian product, inclusion–exclusion principle, cooperative strategy, Shapley value, fuzzy Shapley function and Choquet integral to model the problem.

The proposed technique optimizes the placement of base stations that minimizes the sortie length of the agents. The results show that the cooperative strategy outperforms the non-cooperative strategy. The Shapley values quantify the rewards of each group based on their contributions to the search operation, whereas the fuzzy Shapley values determine the rewards of each group based on their contributions and level of cooperation in the search operation.

The proposed model can be applied to model many real-time problems such as patrolling in international borders, urban areas, forests and managing rescue operations after natural calamities, etc. Therefore, defence organizations, police departments and other operation management sectors will be benefitted by applying the proposed approach.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, determining the optimal locations of base stations in a region is not explored in the existing works on target searching problems with fuel constraints. The proposed approach to cooperatively search the targets in a region is new. Introducing the Shapley function and fuzzy Shapley function is a novel idea to quantify the rewards of each group based on their contributions and level of cooperation in the search operation. This paper addresses these unexplored areas.

This study aims to look at how a small group of university students used the new library web scale search discovery tool, “Summon”, and whether they encountered any difficulties pertaining to navigation, ease of use and the quality of the search results.

Researchers conducted a series of usability studies in which students were observed as they conducted some typical library resource searches using the new discovery search platform.

The paper analyses the data, describes and reports the findings of the usability tests. The study found that the new homepage design of providing a single search box was an effective interface for users. The students found a single search box discovery solution was simple to use, and seemed to deliver satisfactory results on a selection of typical library search tasks. The study confirms some of the promise for web scale discovery, but points to new lines of enquiry in relation to the nature of assistance that students will need in the future, particularly in relation to their need to evaluate information.

Web scale discovery searching is an innovation in the online searching of library collections. The study revealed how a small sample of end‐users experienced the new type of searching and serendipitously identified a new issue that warrants further investigation.