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I think that's quite possible. Here are a couple references I am familiar with. Walker/Janes/Tenopir's Online Retrieval is a bit dated but it does discuss the subject of precision and recall in bibliographic database searching. http://books.google.com/books?id=Srn3Jg7O4XoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false Beyond bibliographic databases, Baeza-Yates/Riberio-Neto's discusses the subject in a broader context. http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Information-Retrieval-Concepts-Technology/dp/0321416910 -marijane On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 10:53 AM, Fleming, Declan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi - I'm wondering if she is using a definition of "database" that seems to > be common in libraries, that means "a resource on the web that we pay for". > > D > > -----Original Message----- > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of > Alain Borel > Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 10:24 AM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Precision and Recall > > Dave Caroline <[log in to unmask]> a écrit : > > The questions seem related to search engines or should you be googling > > for full text indexes or the other more correct name inverted index. > > Because in the normal scheme of events databases return exactly what > > you ask for. > > One could argue that the same thing happens with search engines. After all, > both databases and search engines are deterministic programs that provide a > set of records in response to a query. > > Precision and recall are not determined by what you ask - what defines them > is how relevant the output records are with respect to a real-life question. > It isn't tied to a technology. Of course, it can be more or less difficult > to translate this question into a query, and the program might be more or > less "smart" while processing the query. > Both aspects affect precision and recall, in my opinion. > > Anybody who ever used a bibliographic database using Google-like queries > can testify that a database can have extremely poor precision and recall in > some use cases ;-) > > Best regards, > Alain Borel > EPFL Bibliothèque > Rolex Learning Center > 1015 Lausanne (Switzerland) >