Puka Shells on Alta Vista

1. Day, date, locationSunday evening Nov. 9, 1997 at friend's house.
2. Mood/affective stateHappy because favorite football team won, $$$$$.
3. Search engine, number of times used, whether like it or not, whyThe search engine used was Alta Vista and it was the fourth time I have used it. I liked this engine because I was in a good mood and it is easy to use. Plus there are many tools you can use to improve your search.
4. Statement typed in, why chose those words, did it contain Boolean operators, why/why not, and was it a first search or respnse to anotherStatement typed in was puka shells, no capitals. I chose this statement because I make puka shell necklaces and wanted to see if there were other's doing it also. I didn't include any Boolean operators because I didn't feel it was necessary for this search because on my first search, I got results that I was looking for.
5. Number of expected hitsI expect only about 500.
6. Number of actual hitsYoiker! Totally off. Got 23,908 hits.
7. Reactions to #5 & #6I couldn't believe there were so many hits. I thought my prediction would be pretty close to the actual this time. I thought there wouldn't be that many because I thought only people in Hawaii would know about them and I don't see many real puka shells around.
8. Evaluation of hits: what proportion were relevant and how found this outThere weren't many relevant hits. I found this out by looking at most of the results' titles and summaries. I also visited some sites too. Most of the hits were about shells, but not the kind I was looking for, but the ones that were relevant were really excicting. Although the prices they were asking for the necklaces were really expensive and they weren't that nice.
9. How felt about it, did mood influence how I searched, did topic influence search strategy, did make use of engine instructions or help documents, whyI felt pretty good to find some sites about puka shells. Being in a good mood helped a lot. I didn't really care there were plenty of irrelevant hits, as long as there were some that were relevant. If I was tired or irritated, I would have given up or become upset because there were so little good hits. The topic didn't influence my search strategy in any way and I didn't use the help items because this is what I expected in my search and was happy with it.
10. Ratings Stressful-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Pleasant: Very happy
Dissatisfied-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Satisfied: Little results
Wasted-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Valuable: Nothing new
Confusing-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Clarifying: Nothing
Discouraging-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Hopeful: Got something

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Puka Shells on Webcrawler

1. Day, date, locationSunday evening Nov. 9, 1997 at friend's house.
2. Mood/affective state Happy because favorite football team won, $$$$$.
3. Search engine, number of times used, whether like it or not, whyThe search engine used wasWebcrawler and this was the fourth time I have used this engine. I liked this engine because it's better than Alta Vista and there are a lot of items to help make your search a whole lot easier.
4. Statement typed in, why chose those words, did it contain Boolean operators, why/why not, and was it a first search or respnse to anotherThe statement typed in was puka shells , no capitals. I chose this statement because I make puka shell necklaces and wanted to see if there were other's doing it also. I didn't include any Boolean operators because I didn't include it in my other search on Alta Vista, and they had to be the same, and because I felt I didn't need any.
5. Number of expected hitsSince Alta Vista had around 23,000, and Webcrawler gets less, about 10,000.
6. Number of actual hitsStill too much, this time only got 3,361 hits.
7. Reactions to #5 & #6Not too surprised, I expected little results. Hopefully since there are less, more will be relevant this time.
8. Evaluation of hits: what proportion were relevant and how found this outAgain, most of the results were irrelevant. Many were about shells, but not the kind I was looking for. Some were not even close to what I was looking for. I found this out by looking at the titles and summareis of most of the results and also visited some of the sites to see some pictures.
9. How felt about it, did mood influence how I searched, did topic influence search strategy, did make use of engine instructions or help documents, whyAgain, I wasn't too discouraged because this is what I expected. I didn't expect to find many relevant hits, but was happy as long as there were a few relevant ones. Also being happy made it not seem so bad, but if I weren't happy, this would have been a very bad search. The topic didn't influence my search strategy and I didn't use any help documents, although I now feel I should have to make my search more efficient.
10. Ratings Stressful-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Pleasant: Happy
Dissatisfied-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Satisfied: Little results
Wasted-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Valuable: Gained nothing
Confusing-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Clarifying: ?????
Discouraging-3/-2/-1/0/+1/+2/+3Hopeful: Had something

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