SIMS 202 Assignment 5

Due Thursday Nov 6 in class

The goals of this assignment are to:

• Give you experience with sophisticated query languages.
• Have you consider how search results differ based on how a query is formulated.
• Have you consider how search results differ based on which collection is searched.
• Give you experience with a powerful search user interface.

This Lexis-Nexis interface is a very powerful tool. The best thing you could do is explore all of its options and get to know it well. The questions below, to which answers should be turned in on November 6, are intended to get you started and give you some guidance.. Mainly you should view this as an opportunity to learn by doing and exploring. Feel free to talk with other students about it but do your own work. It should be fun!

Logistics

The following directions may only work under windows NT as I have not tested it on any other interface. Be robust and adjust if necessary.

We are not describing every step in detail here. Learn to become confident using new, unfamiliar software. If things get wedged, just try again.

Getting Started

Activities and Questions

Read the help pages under basic searching.

(1) What is the syntax for stemming of query terms? In other words, how can you compactly indicate assignments OR assigns OR assignment ?

Read through the help pages for Boolean searches. Read about Connectors , including changing connector sequences and combining connectors. Connector is another word for operator.

(2a) What connector makes it easy to retrieve the various ways a name might appear?

(2b) What is the difference, for Boolean queries, between connectors and commands in Lexis-Nexis?

(2c) How are phrases indicated in Boolean search for Lexis-Nexis? Is there away to search on phrases of more than two words?

(3a) What is the precedence ordering of the Lexis-Nexis operators (connectors)?

(3b) In what order does the system interpret the following query?

drug W/2 cure! W/5 disease OR malaria W/3 jungle OR rain AND forest

Read through the help pages for selecting sources.

Sign on if you haven't already. While you're doing the exercises below you might get signed off. Don't worry about it if this happens, just sign on again.

Bring up a search dialog box (there are several ways to do this; one way is to click on the green B on the iconic menu bar).

To get a list of sources you have to first type in something in the Client entry box. This gives you a name under which to save a bunch of searches. A good name might be something like yourname-assignment5-practice.

Once you do this you can see a list of available sources. Navigate down into

News and Business (US)
Computers and Communications
Combined Publications
CMPCON;CURNWS

Specify the following as your query in the Boolean query window:

java AND contract

You get an option to view as Full text or as KWIC (keyword in context). You can adjust this as you look at the results from the View menu. Adjust how large the KWIC window size is using Variable KWIC. (Read about KWIC and its variations in the help menus.) The Browse menu item lets you view more of the document.

(4a) How many documents are brought back?
(4b) Upon what criteria do the documents seem to be ordered?
(4c) Can the ordering of documents returned for Boolean queries be adjusted by options in the system?

To get back to the search dialog box click on the magnifying glass icon in the menubar.

Read about modifying your search. Modify your Boolean search by replying ``Add'' with ``1'' in the modify search dialog box. Modify the search by typing

AND Microsoft

in the entry form that appears just below the menubars. You can view the search levels by choosing Change Search Level in the Search menu and requesting a summary.

(5) By how many documents does this reduce the search results?

Now select the freestyle search tab on the search dialog box.

Change your query to be

java contract lawsuit compatibility

View the results with SuperKWIC. This is supposed to pick the best paragraph within the document to show you.

(6) How do these results differ from the first Boolean search?

(7) Do a search in which you specify some kind of metadata (other than date) such as author. How did you specify it?

Now browse around the sources. Pick a subarea such as Public Records and find a source of interest within there.

For some sources, like the EASY;NEWS source in the Easy source directory, you don't have to specify a query. If you don't the system shows you an overview of the contents of the source, which you can navigate around by clicking on numbers.

(8-10) For three queries/topics that are of interest to you:

(a) State what your information need is.
(b) State which source(s) you are searching on.
(c) Specify the query in the Boolean format -- what is it?
(d) How many documents did you get back?
(e) Reformulate the query by using modify search (adding levels) If you got many documents back, try to reduce the number returned, otherwise try to increase the number returned.
Did this work? If not, why do you think it didn't?
(f)Now specify the more complex query in Freestyle format. Do the sets of returned documents seem different in Boolean vs. Freestyle? Can you describe how qualitatively?

As part of one of the Boolean queries above, do something with synonym search. How did you specify it? What happened?

Look at the ``segment'' facility. As part of one of the queries above make use of it in one of these queries. What did you do?

In general, get to know how to use as many search options as possible. Try to see how changing your query changes the kinds of results you get back.