ecoi.net search features

Here are a few notes re. searching the re-designed ecoi.net site:

Browse by country:
- When you select a country from the drop-down list, you'll be presented with a country menu providing access to country and human rights reports, organized in reverse chronological order so the most recent items appear first.
- Other options lead you to background country information (mainly from AlertNet, the BBC, CIA World Fact Book and the U.S. State Department), maps, national laws and links. Most countries don’t have much listed for the latter two at this early stage of development.
- Some countries also have a link to “Topics and Issues,” which leads to another menu with access to documents by topic (protection, security, humanitarian...), by human rights issue, by background country category, etc. [Note: The white font on the yellow background is very hard to read on this menu.]

Searching:
If you select a country and enter a search term, the search will be conducted throughout the ecoi.net database, so more documents are searched than the specific ones listed in the individual country menus.

Alternatively, you can just enter a search term or terms. Depending on the term entered, it can sometimes take a while before your search results are displayed. Moreover, there is no indication that the search is being processed, which can be a bit confusing. It would be helpful to have some confirmation that a search is actually taking place.

Advanced search allows you to focus your search to a specific source/publisher, document type and/or language. You can also indicate a time frame to limit your results. You have the option to sort your search results by publication date, publication on ecoi.net (i.e., when it was posted to the site, which is not necessarily the same was when it was published), and relevance.

Search results:
If you search by a keyword, the results include a snippet of the report displaying the keywords in context. The link, however, still connects you to the original document and source. This is helpful for verification purposes. A link is also provided to the homepage of the publisher/source.

Overall, most features from the original site have been retained. However, the revised site is more streamlined than it was before. The previous homepage was too busy - there was a lot to have to sift through. The new ecoi.net is now better structured, and users are not immediately confronted with a mass of information, particularly when selecting an individual country.

Now it’s up to COI users to determine the efficacy of the search engine and site and its ability to support the COI research process!

Posted in Web Sites/Tools.