A review of an existing IR system Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

A review of an existing IR system - Essay Example What is more, the researcher acknowledges that each of the different information retrieval systems available have its own strengths and weaknesses, which make their use in certain context inappropriate as against other forms of use. With this in mind, the report will seek to critically describe, by coming out with a detailed descriptive account of a selected information retrieval system, which will become a basis for users of the report to make decisions on the information retrieval system. The description shall be done in accordance with how the system allows for specific information retrieval tasks to be performed. Thereafter, findings from the study shall be outlined, which shall mainly dwell on the strengths, weaknesses and areas of improvement for the selected information retrieval system. Finally, there is a realization that for every information retrieval to take place there must be a corresponding information source, which leads to the next topic of this discussion. Introduct ion to Information Retrieval and selected IR system The internet continues to dominate as an important tool in the search, retrieval and storage of information. Indeed, with the coming of the internet, there is now a centralized whole-point where almost every kind of information and data can be found (Ando and Tong, 2005a). This has been made possible because of the easily accessible nature of the internet where everyone can stay and live in the comfort of his home and input pieces of information online. Commonly, the same form of information exists online and from several sources that, when a person wants to make use of a particular line of information, the options available to choose from are more than required. Apart from the numerous natures of available options, there is also an issue with the differences with information source quality, where some sources of information can be proven to be more reliable, authentic and valid than others (van Rijsbergen, 2009). Han and George (2 000) has explained information retrieval as a conscious activity that is aimed at obtaining information resources that are highly relevant to a person’s information need from available information sources. This definition indeed gives a very broad overview of the concept of information retrieval and explains it even further. In the first place, it would be noted that information retrieval does not take place as an accidental process but as an intential process, and thus the use of the word, ‘conscious’. In effect, people who perform information retrieval are people who sit before their computers and other internet media with the mind of finding something useful for further processing. Secondly, the definitions establish that information retrieval must lead to the obtaining information that is highly relevant to a searcher’s quest. In other words, information retrieval would always lead to a pool of options for the person undertaking the search. The person performing the search thus has a role to play at that point when he is presented with the pool of options and this role is to ensure that he becomes part of the search by selecting only what is most relevant to the search. Description of selected IR system This section of the report therefore deals with a description of how PubMed has developed functionalities to help support its users with their search. This is made up