Search (57 results, page 3 of 3)

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Abstract

Query reformulation is a key user behavior during Web search. Our research goal is to develop predictive models of query reformulation during Web searching. This article reports results from a study in which we automatically classified the query-reformulation patterns for 964,780 Web searching sessions, composed of 1,523,072 queries, to predict the next query reformulation. We employed an n-gram modeling approach to describe the probability of users transitioning from one query-reformulation state to another to predict their next state. We developed first-, second-, third-, and fourth-order models and evaluated each model for accuracy of prediction, coverage of the dataset, and complexity of the possible pattern set. The results show that Reformulation and Assistance account for approximately 45% of all query reformulations; furthermore, the results demonstrate that the first- and second-order models provide the best predictability, between 28 and 40% overall and higher than 70% for some patterns. Implications are that the n-gram approach can be used for improving searching systems and searching assistance.

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Date

3. 6.2005 20:40:22

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Abstract

This article addresses a crucial issue in the digital library environment: how to support effective interaction of users with heterogeneous and distributed information resources. In particular, this study compared usability, user preference, effectiveness, and searching behaviors in systems that implement interaction with multiple databases as if they were one (integrated interaction) in a experiment in the TREC environment. 28 volunteers were recruited from the graduate students of the School of Communication, Information & Library Studies at Rutgers University. Significantly more subjects preferred the common interface to the integrated interface, mainly because they could have more control over database selection. Subjects were also more satisfied with the results from the common interface, and performed better with the common interface than with the integrated interface. Overall, it appears that for this population, interacting with databases through a common interface is preferable on all grounds to interacting with databases through an integrated interface. These results suggest that: (1) the general assumption of the information retrieval (IR) literature that an integrated interaction is best needs to be revisited; (2) it is important to allow for more user control in the distributed environment; (3) for digital library purposes, it is important to characterize different databases to support user choice for integration; and (4) certain users prefer control over database selection while still opting for results to be merged

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Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that queries to information retrieval systems will yield more relevant results if they contain multiple topic-related terms and use Boolean and phrase operators to enhance interpretation. Although studies have shown that the users of Web-based search engines typically enter short, term-based queries and rarely use search operators, little information exists concerning the effects of term and operator usage on the relevancy of search results. In this study, search engine users formulated queries on eight search topics. Each query was submitted to the user-specified search engine, and relevancy ratings for the retrieved pages were assigned. Expert-formulated queries were also submitted and provided a basis for comparing relevancy ratings across search engines. Data analysis based on our research model of the term and operator factors affecting relevancy was then conducted. The results show that the difference in the number of terms between expert and nonexpert searches, the percentage of matching terms between those searches, and the erroneous use of nonsupported operators in nonexpert searches explain most of the variation in the relevancy of search results. These findings highlight the need for designing search engine interfaces that provide greater support in the areas of term selection and operator usage

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Abstract

The VIBE (Visual Information Browsing Environment) prototype system, which was developed at Molde College in Norway in conjunction with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, allows users to evaluate documents from a retrieved set that is graphically represented as geometric icons within one screen display. While the formal modeling behind VIBE and other information visualization retrieval systems is weIl known, user interaction with the system is not. This investigation tested the designer assumption that VIBE is a tool for a smart (expert) user and asked: What are the effects of the different levels of user expertise upon VIBE usability? Three user groups including novices, online searching experts, and VIBE system experts totaling 31 participants were tested over two sessions with VIBE. Participants selected appropriate features to complete tasks, but did not always solve the tasks correctly. Task timings improved over repeated use with VIBE and the nontypical visually oriented tasks were resolved more successfully than others. Statistically significant differences were not found among all parameters examined between novices and online experts. The VIBE system experts provided the predicted baseline for this study and the VIBE designer assumption was shown to be correct. The study's results point toward further exploration of cognitive preattentive processing, which may help to understand better the novice/expert paradigm when testing a visualized interface design for information retrieval.

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Abstract

Purpose - This exploratory study sets out to describe the ways in which end-users exchanged information between the web and a web online catalog, how they searched one device based on what they knew about the other, and their experiences in navigating between the two devices. Design/methodology/approach - Thirty-one participants were observed searching the web or a web online catalog. After the observations, an interview guide was used to ask targeted questions. Findings - The findings suggest that people familiar with the use of traditional online catalogs were more comfortable using web tools than those who lacked online catalog experience. People who had recent web experience expected online catalog searching to be similar to web searching. However, drawing too close an association between the two systems sometimes caused difficulties when the searching protocols varied, like keyword searching versus selecting an index. Research limitations/implications - Some limitations of the study include a small sampling size, varied responses to interview questions, obtrusive procedures, and lack of generalizability to groups or settings dissimilar from the one in this study. Originality/value - This study provides a rare look into the challenges faced by a diverse group of public library users on the web. It is instructive for practicing librarians and researchers.

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Abstract

This two-part article establishes a model of the mediating factors that influence student information behavior concerning electronic or digital information sources that support their learning. The first part reviews the literature that underpinned the development of the research methodology for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) User Behavior Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, as well as the literature that has subsequently helped to develop the model over the 5 years the Framework operated in the United Kingdom, in five cycles of research that were adjusted to meet the emerging needs of the JISC at the time. The literature review attempts to synthesize the two main perspectives in the research studies: (a) smallscale studies of student information behavior; and (b) the studies that focus on the quantitative usage of particular electronic information services in universities, often including implications for training and support. As the review indicates, there are gaps in the evidence concerning the browsing and selection strategies of undergraduate students and the interaction of some of the mediating influences on information behavior. The Framework developed a multimethod, qualitative and quantitative methodology for the continued monitoring of user behavior. This article discusses the methods used and the projectmanagement challenges involved, and concludes that at the outset, intended impacts need to be specified carefully, and that funding needs to be committed at that point for a longitudinal study. A research project on information behavior, intended to inform current policymaking on infrastructure provision, is inherently difficult as behavior changes lag behind provision.

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Abstract

Recreational reading among young people is reportedly on the decline in the United States. Some researchers have suggested that supporting children's strategies for book selection is crucial to encouraging children to engage with books, indicating that improving these strategies might increase the amount of reading they do. In response, this study explores how elementary-school children select books for recreational reading using a digital library. The work extends traditional models of relevance assessment with reader-response theory, employing the concept of aesthetic relevance: the potential of a document to provide a suitable reading experience. Individuals define aesthetic relevance in personal terms and apply it as they assess documents, much as they do in traditional relevance assessment. This study identified a total of 46 factors organized along seven dimensions that influence children's assessment of the aesthetic relevance of books during selection. The analysis yielded differences in the prevalence of the aesthetic-relevance factors that children mention at various stages of book selection. In addition, the children exhibited differences by age and subtle differences by gender in the frequency of mention of various aesthetic-relevance factors. Recommendations drawn from the findings are offered to improve systems design and literacy education in order to enhance children's access to books and to promote recreational reading.

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Abstract

The aim of the work described in this paper is to evaluate the influencing effects of query-biased summaries in web searching. For this purpose, a summarisation system has been developed, and a summary tailored to the user's query is generated automatically for each document retrieved. The system aims to provide both a better means of assessing document relevance than titles or abstracts typical of many web search result lists. Through visiting each result page at retrieval-time, the system provides the user with an idea of the current page content and thus deals with the dynamic nature of the web. To examine the effectiveness of this approach, a task-oriented, comparative evaluation between four different web retrieval systems was performed; two that use query-biased summarisation, and two that use the standard ranked titles/abstracts approach. The results from the evaluation indicate that query-biased summarisation techniques appear to be more useful and effective in helping users gauge document relevance than the traditional ranked titles/abstracts approach. The same methodology was used to compare the effectiveness of two of the web's major search engines; AltaVista and Google.

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Abstract

This research draws on longitudinal network data from an online community to examine patterns of users' behavior and social interaction, and infer the processes underpinning dynamics of system use. The online community represents a prototypical example of a complex evolving social network in which connections between users are established over time by online messages. We study the evolution of a variety of properties since the inception of the system, including how users create, reciprocate, and deepen relationships with one another, variations in users' gregariousness and popularity, reachability and typical distances among users, and the degree of local redundancy in the system. Results indicate that the system is a small world characterized by the emergence, in its early stages, of a hub-dominated structure with heterogeneity in users' behavior. We investigate whether hubs are responsible for holding the system together and facilitating information flow, examine first-mover advantages underpinning users' ability to rise to system prominence, and uncover gender differences in users' gregariousness, popularity, and local redundancy. We discuss the implications of the results for research on system use and evolving social networks, and for a host of applications, including information diffusion, communities of practice, and the security and robustness of information systems.

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Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine changes in relevance assessments, specifically the selection of relevance criteria by subjects as they move through the information search process. Design/methodology/approach - The paper examines the relevance criteria choices of 39 subjects in relation to search stage. Subjects were assigned a specific search task in a controlled test. Statistics were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics and the chi-square goodness-of-fit tests. Findings - The statistically significant findings identified a number of commonly reported relevance criteria, which varied over an information search process for relevant and partially relevant judgments. These results provide statistical confirmations of previous studies, and extend these findings identifying specific criteria for both relevant and partially relevant judgments. Research limitations/implications - The study only examines a short duration search process and since the convenience sample of subjects were from similar backgrounds and were assigned similar tasks, the study did not explicitly examine the impact of contextual factors such as user experience, background or task in relation to relevance criteria choices. Practical implications - The paper has implications for the development of search systems which are adaptive and recognize the cognitive changes which occur during the information search process. Examining and identifying relevance criteria beyond topicality and the importance of those criteria to a user can help in the generation of better search queries. Originality/value - The paper adds more rigorous statistical analysis to the study of relevance criteria and the information search process.

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Abstract

The results of a small qualitative study of gay and lesbian information users suggest that facet analysis as it is increasingly practised in the field of information architecture provides a promising avenue for improving information access to gay and lesbian information resources. Findings indicated that gay and lesbian information users have an acute sense of categorization grounded in the need to identify gay-positive physical and social spaces, and in their finely-honed practices of detecting gay "facets" to general information themes. They are also, however, very flexible and adaptable in their application of gay-related facet values, which suggests that browsing systems will have to be designed with considerable care.

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Content

1. Introduction Significant research in the design and use of online public access catalogues (OPACs) has been conducted by professionals in library and information science (Borgman, 1996; Carlyle, 2001, Carlyle & Timmons, 2002; Hancock, 1987). However, only limited research has addressed actual library user interaction with and perceptions of online catalogue displays and bibliographic elements (Abrera, 1986; Luk, 1996; Markey, 1983). Retrieval systems, specifically online library catalogues, should consider user perceptions and expectations as an important aspect of design and implementation for improved catalogue efficiency (Hert, 1996). Therefore, it is necessary to examine the online catalogue from a user perspective to determine if it is currently succeeding in meeting the bibliographic needs of users in terms of description, display, navigation, and to provide principles for design of future OPACs. A study seeking to understand better how public library users interact with general OPAC displays and the more specific displays of bibliographic information was conducted in 2003. Research questions focused an 1) user perceptions of the OPAC, 2) the elements in a bibliographic display standing out as most important in selection and identification, and 3) user feedback an the process of using the OPAC. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the larger study findings having implications for future research and online catalogue design.

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Content

1. Introduction A small study is described which investigated the vocabulary as reflected in the knowledge structures of novices. The research was conducted in order to understand how knowledge organization tools may be designed to meet the needs of novices in the GROW digital library. GROW is the Geo-technical, Rock, and Water digital library, the first step in the establishment of a National Civil Engineering Resources Library (NCERL). Digital libraries are complex entities that have many components: besides the collections of individual resources and the interface to these resources, they have organization, labelling, navigation and searching systems. Controlled vocabularies and thesauri are often the invisible components. This study is based an the premise that the controlled vocabulary influences the above mentioned related components in the digital library. We felt that it was important to understand the knowledge structures of a primary group of user, the novice - the student learner - who is new to the domain. A great deal of research has been done about how people learn and how people use information, but fewer studies link science knowledge structures, vocabulary, and language use.

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Abstract

Thesauri have been important information and knowledge organisation tools for more than three decades. The recent emergence and phenomenal growth of the World Wide Web has created new opportunities to introduce thesauri as information search and retrieval aids to end user communities. While the number of web-based and hypertextual thesauri continues to grow, few investigations have yet been carried out to evaluate how end-users, for whom all these efforts are ostensibly made, interact with and make use of thesauri for query building and expansion. The present paper reports a pilot study carried out to determine the extent to which a thesaurus-enhanced search interface to a web-based database aided end-users in their selection of search terms. The study also investigated the ways in which users interacted with the thesaurus structure, terms, and interface. Thesaurusbased searching and browsing behaviours adopted by users while interacting with the thesaurus-enhanced search interface were also examined. 1. Introduction The last decade has witnessed the emergence of a broad range of applications for knowledge structures in general and thesauri in particular. A number of researchers have predicted that thesauri will increasingly be used in retrieval rather than for indexing (Milstead, 1998; Aitchison et al., 1997) and that their application in information retrieval systems will become more diverse due to the growth of fulltext databases accessed over the Internet (Williamson, 2000). Some researchers have emphasised the need for tailoring the structure and content of thesauri as tools for end-user searching (Bates, 1986; Strong and Drott, 1986; Anderson and Rowley, 1991; Lopez-Huertas, 1997) while others have suggested thesaurus-enhanced user interfaces to support query formulation and expansion (Pollitt et.al., 1994; Jones et.al., 1995; Beaulieu, 1997). The recent phenomenal growth of the World Wide Web has created new opportunities to introduce thesauri as information search and retrieval aids to end user communities. While the number of web-based and hypertextual thesauri continues to grow, few investigations have been carried out to evaluate the ways in which end-users interact with and make use of online thesauri for query building and expansion. The work reported here expands an a pilot study (Shiri and Revie, 2001) carried out to investigate user - thesaurus interaction in the domains of biology and veterinary medicine.

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Abstract

The article reports a field study which examined the mental models of 80 undergraduates seeking information for either a history or psychology course essay when they were in an early, exploration stage of researching their essay. This group is presently at a disadvantage when using thesaurus-type schemes in indexes and online search engines because there is a disconnect between how domain novice users of IR systems represent a topic space and how this space is represented in the standard IR system thesaurus. The study attempted to (a) ascertain the coding language used by the 80 undergraduates in the study to mentally represent their topic and then (b) align the mental models with the hierarchical structure found in many thesauri. The intervention focused the undergraduates' thinking about their topic from a topic statement to a thesis statement. The undergraduates were asked to produce three mental model diagrams for their real-life course essay at the beginning, middle, and end of the interview, for a total of 240 mental model diagrams, from which we created a 12-category mental model classification scheme. Findings indicate that at the end of the intervention, (a) the percentage of vertical mental models increased from 24 to 35% of all mental models; but that (b) 3rd-year students had fewer vertical mental models than did 1st-year undergraduates in the study, which is counterintuitive. The results indicate that there is justification for pursuing our research based on the hypothesis that rotating a domain novice's mental model into a vertical position would make it easier for him or her to cognitively connect with the thesaurus's hierarchical representation of the topic area.