Webology, Volume 2, Number 1, April, 2005 |
| Home | Table of Contents | Titles & Subject Index | Authors Index |
Saeid Asadi
Data & Knowledge Engineering Group, ITEE School, The University of Queensland, Australia
Beside its numerous advantages, the World-Wide Web has introduced many issues and challenges to computer and information sciences. Not only Web resources are in different languages and forms but also the creator of them belong to various groups and interests. So far, many attempts have been done to address technical issues of world-wide networking, information storage, searching and indexing more documents, user-computer interaction and so on.
Librarians and information professionals used bibliometric and later informetric techniques in selection and usage of information resources to improve their services. The World-Wide Web could be considered as a monstrous library containing billions of resources. To manage this big collection, it is necessary to understand which rules and patterns the Web resources follow. While the basics of webometrics are adopted from bibliometrics, this field has specific characteristics and issues. Webometrics studies the quantitative aspects of the Web such as link structure, logs, Web communities and so on (Thelwall, Vaughan & Björneborn, 2005).
Search engines are the most popular tool for finding and using web resources. For search engines, the amount and variety of covered and indexed resources, ranking methods, retrieval speed and user interface are key technical criteria. Recall and precision techniques have been used to evaluate and compare different search engines.
For information professionals, not only the technical abilities, but also the human, organizational and social aspects of the Internet are important. Many studies have been conducted to measure the productivity of Internet-based services in libraries and other organizations. Studies on information seeking behavior are very useful in planning the future developments of information services based on the real needs and interests. It seems that research interests on technical and user-related issues of the Web and search engines are growing synchronously.
The third issue of Webology consists of three articles including search strategies and habits of Internet users as well as webometrics.
Laurie A. Henry: Information Search Strategies on the Internet: A Critical Component of New Literacies. It reports a study on the teachers of a rural school in northeastern Connecticut to explore their search strategies on the Internet and their ideas about teaching such skills to students. The article unveils that teachers believe their students know more about new technologies, however, they should be taught how to locate information on Internet.
Asefeh Asemi: Information Searching Habits of Internet Users: A Case Study on the Medical Sciences University of Isfahan, Iran. This paper is a survey on search habits and interests of Internet users in a prestigious Iranian university and discusses in detail about scientific information search habits of the students and academic staff.
Alireza Noruzi: Web Impact Factors for Iranian Universities. This paper reports a research on link analysis of webpages to measure the WIF of Iranian university websites. Results indicate that these sites are linked slightly. Non-English webpages, including Iranian university websites which are often in Persian language, do not attract enough attention, and this should be considered in the development of the global Web.