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In search of the elusive end user: Delivered at the EUSIDIC Annual Conference, Abano Terme, Italy 16–19 October 1989

Roger K. Summit (Dialog Information Services Inc.)

Online Review

ISSN: 0309-314X

Article publication date: 1 June 1989

20

Abstract

Some of you will remember a search system called Leadermart which was developed at Lehigh University in the early 1970s under the direction of Don Hillman. Don viewed Leadermart as one of the few early systems designed for end users rather than information specialists. He attributed its lack of acceptance by information specialists to the marriage of librarians to Boolean searching and their unwillingness to try anything new. Leadermart, however, was not particularly popular with end users either. In my opinion Leadermart's lack of acceptance was primarily due to the quality of results it produced. Also this is important in evaluating current ‘expert systems’ approaches to searching. With Leadermart, if you didn't get good results you had no way of knowing how to change your request to improve the results. Some people pursuing the end user today feel simpler interfaces of the Leadermart type are the single answer to capturing this vast market. In what follows I hope to show that the problem is substantially more complex than suggested by this simple solution.

Citation

Summit, R.K. (1989), "In search of the elusive end user: Delivered at the EUSIDIC Annual Conference, Abano Terme, Italy 16–19 October 1989", Online Review, Vol. 13 No. 6, pp. 485-491. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb024325

Publisher

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MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1989, MCB UP Limited

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