Overseas Development Institute, London; London School of Economics
We present the findings of an evaluation of "Focuss.eu", a specialised domain search engine based on Google Co-op, for retrieval of development-related information. The engine was compared side-by-side with regular Google Web search and proved to provide better relevance for development-related terms. The improvement was particularly marked for ambiguous terms that were used in a development context but which gave increased noise on regular Web searches. On the basis of this we would recommend Focuss.eu for development search, albeit remaining conscious of the limitations of the engine in reaching resources on the “invisible” academic Web of electronic databases and libraries.
We also conducted an initial user requirements survey and prototype evaluation for a social bookmarking system hosted on the Institute’s intranet. There was much interest in the use of shared bookmarking, and a considerable amount of relevant links stored in less accessible personal information stores (browser favorites). In practice, the prototype performed quite well, though there were some basic usability issues. An additional problem was convincing users of the value of sharing links and thereby developing a critical mass of users and a good resource base. On the basis of the initial trial we would recommend appropriation of social bookmarking within development organisations, though there is an accompanying training need and a need to “sell” the concept, perhaps by demonstrating the number of different ways that the resulting knowledge base may be accessed and disseminated.
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