DEVELOPMENT OF AN ONLINE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM (A CASE STUDY OF NIGERIA’S FEDERAL CIVIL SERVANTS)

DEVELOPMENT OF AN ONLINE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM (A Case study of Nigeria’s Federal Civil Servants)

ABSTRACT
This research work was conducted to investigate the nature and impact of an effective online interactive information retrieval in relation to Federal Civil Servants in Nigeria, problem facing the use of the Internet as a source of information among Federal Civil Servants and also the ability to understand the knowledge and the basis of internet usage. This choice includes their inadequate knowledge of the various types of online System from which information can be interactively retrieved. Various techniques were used in the fact finding; they include interviews, questionnaires, on-site observation and record reviews.

Two software applications were deployed in the development of the software: (PHP) Hypertext Protocol as the programming language used on the front end and MySQL at the back end. A simple percentage analysis revealed that the old system involves piling paper files in several cabinets kept at different office locations, coupled with tedious search for information, which makes the process inefficient and undermines the integrity and security of the data/information. This corroborated the pre-research speculations, which gave rise to this research work.

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Preamble
Information retrieval (IR) is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web. There is overlap in the usage of the terms data retrieval, document retrieval, information retrieval, and text retrieval, but each also has its own body of literature, theory, praxis, and technologies. IR is interdisciplinary, based on computer science, mathematics, library science, information science, information architecture, cognitive psychology, linguistics, statistics and law (Singhal, 2001).
Automated information retrieval systems are used to reduce what has been called “information overload”. Many universities and public libraries use IR systems to provide access to books, journals and other documents. Web search engines are the most visible IR applications.IR in a digital environment is strongly affected by the IR system, the user, the information and the environment.
Walker and Janes (1999) identified the uniqueness of online IR system:
· First, online searches are conducted in real time. Users can search and obtain results almost immediately.
· Secondly, online IR systems offer remote access. Users can search at any location as long as there is internet connection.
The typical online IR systems can be classified into the following four types:
· Online Database Environments
· OPAC Environments
· Digital Library Environments
· Web Search Engine Environments

DEVELOPMENT OF AN ONLINE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM (A Case study of Nigeria’s Federal Civil Servants)