Practical 9

Wow this is the last practical for UIR!

In this practical we must...

Describe in a paragraph, the most important lesson that you had learnt in your UIR journey.

The most important lesson that I have learn in UIR is the searching techniques and the use of different types of search facilities. Previously, when searching for something, I would just do a basic search and end up having to dig through pages of results before finding what I am looking for. However, after learning the searching techniques such as using stems, wildcards, boolean operators etc, I am able to search for information on the net more effectively and efficiently. Before learning the use of different types of search facilities, the only search facility I would use is the search engine. However, I realise this was a grave mistake. Different search facilities are useful in different situations. For example, use a search engine or meta search engine to search for familiar topics and use a subject directory to search for an unfamiliar topic. By learning the pros and cons of each search facilities, I am now able to optimize my searches to obtain the best results.