University of Toronto

Evaluate and compare the efficiency and effectiveness of several search engines looking for data sets for GIS. We will look at 3 – 6 search engines, some general and some more specialized.

The object of this study is to:
1)Investigate the various means of retrieving GIS datasets
2)Look at the search interfaces used for such retrieval
3)Compare the specialized interfaces to the more general search engines to see what makes the specialized interfaces more attractive to users of GIS (if indeed they are).