Search (55 results, page 1 of 3)

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LCSH

Libraries / United States / Automation
Library surveys / United States

Subject

Libraries / United States / Automation
Library surveys / United States

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Abstract

This article discusses the major catalog use studies that have been conducted in the United States and Great Britain. The potential to influence the construction of new online public access catalogs is emphasized. The cumulative findings could serve as an information base which designers of OPAC systems could refer to in the course of their work

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Abstract

Summarizes findings of an international study on information-seeking habits and preferences: With extensive input from hundreds of librarians and OCLC staff, the OCLC Market Research team developed a project and commissioned Harris Interactive Inc. to survey a representative sample of information consumers. In June of 2005, we collected over 3,300 responses from information consumers in Australia, Canada, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Perceptions report provides the findings and responses from the online survey in an effort to learn more about: * Library use * Awareness and use of library electronic resources * Free vs. for-fee information * The "Library" brand The findings indicate that information consumers view libraries as places to borrow print books, but they are unaware of the rich electronic content they can access through libraries. Even though information consumers make limited use of these resources, they continue to trust libraries as reliable sources of information.

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Abstract

An ongoing thread in information retrieval research has been the exploration of user goals (or information needs, or problems) on information retrieval systems. It has been suggested that an understanding of goals and their role in the information retrieval interaction can provide insight into appropriate retrieval strategies, relevant documents, and general system design. This article reports on empirical findings concerning goals of users searching an OPAC at a northeastern United States university. These findings were generated during a large inductive and qualitative study of users' interactions with the OPAC. It was found that respondents came to the OPAC to search for a variety of course- or degree-related projects in which they were engaged. Respondent goals were not greatly modified during the course of these interactions. A set of situational elements associated with the respondent's goal was also identified. The implications of these findings for OPAC design and the training of informational professionals are discussed

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Abstract

In an effort to understand how academic scientists seek information relevant to their research in today's environment of ubiquitous electronic access, a correlation framework is built and regression analysis is applied to the survey results from 2,063 academic researchers in natural science, engineering, and medical science at five research universities in the United States. Previous work has reported descriptive statistics about these scientists' information-seeking behavior. This study extends that work to examine relationships between scientists' information-seeking behaviors and their personal and environmental factors. Several regression models, including the Poisson model, the logit model, and the ordered logit model, are built to interpret the correlation among scientists' behaviors. In addition, exploratory factor analysis is used for data reduction. Overall, many factors were found to affect the specific information-seeking behaviors of scientists, including demographic, psychological, role-related, and environmental factors. Of the factors having an effect, academic position was the most important determinant of information behavior.

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Abstract

A search for information can be viewed as a series of decisions made by the searcher. Two dimensions of the search environment affect a user's decisions: the user's knowledge, and the configuration of the information retrieval system. Drawing an previous findings an users' lack of search or domain knowledge, this article investigates what the user needs to know to make informed search decisions at the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Web site, which provides statistical information an labor and related topics. Its extensive Web site is a rich collection of statistical information, ranging from individual statistics such as the current Consumer Price Index (CM), to a [arge statistical database called LABSTAT that can be queried to construct a tabie or time series an the fly. Two models of the search environment and the query process in LABSTAT are presented. They provide complementary views of the decision points at which help may be needed, and also suggest useful help content. Extensive examples based an the industry concept illustrate how the information could assist users' search decisions. The article concludes with a discussion of the role of help facilities in Web searching, and the interesting question of how to initiate the provision of help.

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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

Reports on a dramatic shift from subject to periodical title searching at Colorado University Libraries. States possible reasons for the change, examines problems encountered by users with searching the periodical title index and suggests how this change in online catalogue searching may affect future catalogue design and bibliographic instruction

Date

29. 7.1998 10:57:22

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Abstract

The purposes of this study were to explore college students' perceptions, uses of, and motivations for using Wikipedia, and to understand their information behavior concerning Wikipedia based on social cognitive theory (SCT). A Web survey was used to collect data in the spring of 2008. The study sample consisted of students from an introductory undergraduate course at a large public university in the midwestern United States. A total of 134 students participated in the study, resulting in a 32.8% response rate. The major findings of the study include the following: Approximately one-third of the students reported using Wikipedia for academic purposes. The students tended to use Wikipedia for quickly checking facts and finding background information. They had positive past experiences with Wikipedia; however, interestingly, their perceptions of its information quality were not correspondingly high. The level of their confidence in evaluating Wikipedia's information quality was, at most, moderate. Respondents' past experience with Wikipedia, their positive emotional state, their disposition to believe information in Wikipedia, and information utility were positively related to their outcome expectations of Wikipedia. However, among the factors affecting outcome expectations, only information utility and respondents' positive emotions toward Wikipedia were related to their use of it. Further, when all of the independent variables, including the mediator, outcome expectations, were considered, only the variable information utility was related to Wikipedia use, which may imply a limited applicability of SCT to understanding Wikipedia use. However, more empirical evidence is needed to determine the applicability of this theory to Wikipedia use. Finally, this study supports the knowledge value of Wikipedia (Fallis, [2008]), despite students' cautious attitudes toward Wikipedia. The study suggests that educators and librarians need to provide better guidelines for using Wikipedia, rather than prohibiting Wikipedia use altogether.

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Abstract

This paper reports the results of a survey of information needs and information seeking behaviour of a national sample of the UK population. The project was funded by the BLR&IC and comprised a survey by questionnaire covering all regions of the United Kingdom. 1.294 responses were received giving a valid and demographically respresentative response rate of 45,7%. Major findings include: that the majority of respondents had sought information in the past (59,4%) and that an even greater number predicted a future need for information (78,4%). Over three quarters of respondents said that they would use public libraries and between half and three quarters would approach CABx, post offices, government departments or family and friends. Face to face communicationss and reading a book were the most popular means of accessing information but a wide variety of other preferred options were cited. Only a small proportion expressed a preference for using a computer to seek information and there was a clear emphasis on public libraries as an appropriate location for accessing computerised information. A highly significant majority (79,2%) believed that access to information was very important for exercising their rights as citizens. Many significant variables, in terms of age, gender, status and region were found. In particular it was felt significant that young people were less sure of the importance of being able to access information

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Abstract

The authors present a study of the real-life information needs of 59 McGill University undergraduates researching essay topics for either a history or psychology course, interviewed just after they had selected their essay topic. The interview's purpose was to transform the undergraduate's query from general topic terms, based an vague conceptions of their essay topic, to an information need-based query. To chart the transformation, the authors investigate N. J. Belkin, R. N. Oddy, and H. M. Brooks' Anomalous States of Knowledge (ASK) hypothesis (1982a, 1982b), which links the user's ASK to a relevant document set via a common code based an structural facets. In the present study an interoperable structural code based an eight essay styles is created, then notions of structural facets compatible with a highimpact essay structure are presented. The important findings of the study are: (a) the undergraduates' topic statements and terms derived from it do not constitute an effective information need statement because for most of the subjects in the study the topic terms conformed to a low-impact essay style; (b) essay style is an effective interoperable structural code for charting the evolution of the undergraduate's knowledge state from ASK to partial resolution of the ASK in an information need statement.

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Abstract

This article reviews studies, conducted between 1995 and 2000, on Web search behavior. These studies reported on children as well as on adults. Most of the studies on children described their interaction with the Web. Research on adult searchers focused on describing search patterns, and many studies investigated effects of selected factors on search behavior, including information organization and presentation, type of search task, Web experience, cognitive abilities, and affective states. What distinguishes the research on adult searchers is the use of multiple data-gathering methods. The research on Web search behavior reflects researchers' commitment to examine users in their information environment and exhibits rigor in design and data analysis. However, many studies lack external validity. Implications of this body of research are discussed.

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Abstract

This study reports on the first part of a research project that investigated children's cognitive, affective, and physical behaviors as they use the Yahooligans! search engine to find information on a specific search task. 27 seventh-grade science children from a middle school located in Knoxville, Tennessee participated in the period. Their cognitive and physical behaviors were captured using Lotus ScreenCam, a Windows based software package that captures and replays activities recorded in Web browsers, such as Netscape. Their affective states were captured via a one-on-one exit interview. A new measure called "Web traversal measure" was developed to measure children's "weighted" traversal effectiveness and efficiency scores, as well as their quality moves in Yahooligans! Children's prior experience in using the Internet/Web and their knowledge of the Yahooligans! interface were gathered via a questionnaire. The findings provided insights into children's bahviors and success, as their weighted traversal effectiveness and efficiency scores, as well as quality moves. Implications for user training and system design are discussed

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Abstract

This study examined the success and information seeking behaviors of seventh-grade science students and graduate students in information science in using Yahooligans! Web search engine/directory. It investigated these users' cognitive, affective, and physical behaviors as they sought the answer for a fact-finding task. It analyzed and compared the overall patterns of children's and graduate students' Web activities, including searching moves, browsing moves, backtracking moves, looping moves, screen scrolling, target location and deviation moves, and the time they took to complete the task. The authors applied Bilal's Web Traversal Measure to quantify these users' effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of moves they made. Results were based on 14 children's Web sessions and nine graduate students' sessions. Both groups' Web activities were captured online using Lotus ScreenCam, a software package that records and replays online activities in Web browsers. Children's affective states were captured via exit interviews. Graduate students' affective states were extracted from the journal writings they kept during the traversal process. The study findings reveal that 89% of the graduate students found the correct answer to the search task as opposed to 50% of the children. Based on the Measure, graduate students' weighted effectiveness, efficiency, and quality of the Web moves they made were much higher than those of the children. Regardless of success and weighted scores, however, similarities and differences in information seeking were found between the two groups. Yahooligans! poor structure of keyword searching was a major factor that contributed to the "breakdowns" children and graduate students experienced. Unlike children, graduate students were able to recover from "breakdowns" quickly and effectively. Three main factors influenced these users' performance: ability to recover from "breakdowns", navigational style, and focus on task. Children and graduate students made recommendations for improving Yahooligans! interface design. Implications for Web user training and system design improvements are made.

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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

It is common to distinguish sharply between leisure reading undertaken purely for pleasure and utilitarian reading that satisfies what Peter Mann (1969, 53-61) has called `extrinsic' interests: reference materials for work and home such as medical books, cook books and repair manuals. We might suppose that information-seeking is concerned only with utilitarian reading. However, once we adopt a definition of information as something that fills in a gap in understanding or makes a difference to an individual's cognitive structure or helps people with their lives, it follows that we cannot deduce uses simply by looking at the texts themselves. Since meanings are constructed by readers, we must ask the readers about the uses they make of texts in the context of their lives. Findings from a research project focussed on 194 readers who read for pleasure indicate that for a broad understanding of the information behaviour of ordinary people, we need to think beyond reference books to include extended narrative forms, particularly biography, history, and fiction. People who are avid readers for pleasure report that during the course of wide reading they serendipitously encounter information that helps them in their lives

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Abstract

This paper presents the initial stages of the development of a three-dimensional model as a theoretical framework for conceptualizing and exploring interactive information retrieval (IR) with an information seeking context. The model, displayed in Figure 1, includes a Plane of Judgment within a Plane of Interaction within a Plane of Time. The Plane of Judgment includes levels and regions of relevance judgments, and other user judgments during interactive IR, e.g., magnitude or strategy feedback, tactics, search strategies, or search terms. The Plane of Judgment exists within a Plane of Interaction. The Plane of Interaction consists of interactive IR models, including Ingwersen (1992, 1996), Belkin, Cool, Stein and Theil (1995), and Saracevic (1996b, 1997). The Plane of Interaction includes movement or shifts within interactions or search episodes, e.g., tactics, information problem, strategies, terms, feedback, goal states, or uncertainty. IR interactions that occur within a Plane of Interaction exist within a Plane of Time. The Plane of Time includes users' information seeking stages, represented in the model by Kuhlthau's Information Search Process Model (1993) and users' successive searches over time related to the same or evolving information problem (Spink, 1996). The three-dimensional model is a framework for the development of theoretical and empirical research to: 1. Integrate interactive IR research within information-seeking context 2. Explore users' interactive IR episodes within their changing information-seeking contexts 3. Examine relevance judgments within users' information seeking processes 4. Broaden relevance research to include the concurrent exploration of relevance judgment level, region and time

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Abstract

Limited research has investigated the role of multitasking, cognitive coordination, and cognitive shifts during web search. Understanding these three behaviors is crucial to web search model development. This study aims to explore characteristics of multitasking behavior, types of cognitive shifts, and levels of cognitive coordination as well as the relationship between them during web search. Data collection included pre- and postquestionnaires, think-aloud protocols, web search logs, observations, and interviews with 42 graduate students who conducted 315 web search sessions with 221 information problems. Results show that web search is a dynamic interaction including the ordering of multiple information problems and the generation of evolving information problems, including task switching, multitasking, explicit task and implicit mental coordination, and cognitive shifting. Findings show that explicit task-level coordination is closely linked to multitasking, and implicit cognitive-level coordination is related to the task-coordination process; including information problem development and task switching. Coordination mechanisms directly result in cognitive state shifts including strategy, evaluation, and view states that affect users' holistic shifts in information problem understanding and knowledge contribution. A web search model integrating multitasking, cognitive coordination, and cognitive shifts (MCC model) is presented. Implications and further research also are discussed.

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Abstract

The Household Information Systems (HIS) project in Queen Margaret College was funded to explore the use of new media in a group of Edinburgh households (Davenport & Higgins, 1995). One of the motivations of the HIS 'programme' was to find a suitable theoretical and/or exploratory framework, which takes account of multiple aspects of behaviour surrounding technologies, and thus avoids assumptions about their role in information-seeking or other isolated activities. A focus on single activities would occlude knowledge of other motivations: bonding, killing time, defining boundaries. In Phase One, `information management' rather than `information seeking' was used as a conceptual framework, embracing work on the `life cycle' of ICTs as illustrated by Kopytoffs `biography of things' approach (1986), Johnson's cultural circuit (1986), research on households as micro-organisations by McCrone and his colleagues (1994), and work by Silverstone and others on ICTs in the home as tools for internal and external adaptation (Silverstone, 1994, Silverstone et al 1994). The `management' framework has been productive - Phase One allowed us to identify patterns of ICT acquisition and deployment in the home, and, more interestingly, structures of appropriation which reflect rules, roles and responsibilities in individual households. These constitute what may be called a `reproduction lattice' (adapting terminology used by Kling (1987) in his analysis of the `web of computing' in organisations), a structure which captures the political and cultural economy of a household. Phase One's findings are consistent with those of other researchers working in the area of domestic consumption of ICTs but a major limitation of the work is the homogeneous nature of the respondents. Among our Edinburgh 'household managers', internal culture was a more compelling explanation for use than technical functionality.

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Abstract

Users move from one state (or task) to another in an information system's labyrinth as they try to accomplish their work, and the amount of time they spend in each state varies. This article uses continuous-time stochastic models, mainly based on semi-Markov chains, to derive user state transition patterns (both in rates and in probabilities) in a Web-based information system. The methodology was demonstrated with 126,925 search sessions drawn from the transaction logs of the University of California's MELVYL® library catalog system (www.melvyLucop.edu). First, user sessions were categorized into six groups based on their similar use of the system. Second, by using a three-layer hierarchical taxonomy of the system Web pages, user sessions in each usage group were transformed into a sequence of states. All the usage groups but one have third-order sequential dependency in state transitions. The sole exception has fourth-order sequential dependency. The transition rates as well as transition probabilities of the semi-Markov model provide a background for interpreting user behavior probabilistically, at various levels of detail. Finally, the differences in derived usage patterns between usage groups were tested statistically. The test results showed that different groups have distinct patterns of system use. Knowledge of the extent of sequential dependency is beneficial because it allows one to predict a user's next move in a search space based on the past moves that have been made. It can also be used to help customize the design of the user interface to the system to facilitate interaction. The group CL6 labeled "knowledgeable and sophisticated usage" and the group CL7 labeled "unsophisticated usage" both had third-order sequential dependency and had the same most-frequently occurring search pattern: screen display, record display, screen display, and record display. The group CL8 called "highly interactive use with good search results" had fourth-order sequential dependency, and its most frequently occurring pattern was the same as CL6 and CL7 with one more screen display action added. The group CL13, called "known-item searching" had third-order sequential dependency, and its most frequently occurring pattern was index access, search with retrievals, screen display, and record display. Group CL14 called "help intensive searching," and CL18 called "relatively unsuccessful" both had thirdorder sequential dependency, and for both groups the most frequently occurring pattern was index access, search without retrievals, index access, and again, search without retrievals.