Search results

This study considers online searching by health information consumers as a learning process. We focus on search sequences, query reformulation, and conceptual changes.

A qualitative user study (30 participants; three health information seeking tasks) investigated mobile searching behavior. Recorded screen activity, questionnaires, and in-depth personal interview data were collected and analyzed.

(1) Search platform sequences of health information consumers in search as a learning process were exacted and their features were highlighted. (2) Query sequence and reformulation pattern of health information consumers were exacted and discussed. (3) The types and degree of conceptual changes of health consumers were reflected by their query reformulation behavior and differ from different health information search tasks. (4) Characteristics of health consumers' search as learning process were revealed.

(1) A novel perspective of consumer health information studies was proposed by exacting search platform sequence, query sequence and linking them with conceptual changes during the search as learning process. (2) Conceptual changes in the searching as a learning process are regarded as a measure of search outcome in this study, in which terms extracted from queries were used to reflect conceptual changes in consumers' mind. (3) Our findings provide evidences that types of health information seeking tasks do have significant influences on the search as a learning process.

The findings of this study can lead to the fit-to-needs of the search platforms, provide advice for information architecture of search list of search platforms, and guide the design of knowledge graph of health information systems.

Potential relationships between information-seeking behavior and conceptual changes in search as a learning process relative to health information were revealed.

The paper reports experimental results concerning user interaction with document organization, user‐librarian negotiation and the librarian's search processes in public libraries. The focus of the investigations is on the cognitive aspects of information retrieval. After defining the formal framework of the information retrieval (IR) process a theoretical section discusses the cognitive viewpoint on which the research is based, followed by an outline of applicable findings and theories within the fields of cognitive science and cognitive psychology. The experimental design involving tape‐recording and analysis of verbal protocols is briefly described and considered. The main part of the paper concentrates on the results of investigations and considers certain implications. It is shown how the user's knowledge structures cope with the structures of the system. User needs seem often to be presented as a label which may create ambiguity problems. Functions of open and closed questions are investigated and certain behaviouristic factors discussed. Matching the knowledge structure of the user and the librarian is considered a kind of learning process. Librarians prefer search activity before consideration of the presented problem. Without a user present the librarian's IR process is determined by three search attitudes involving motives and expectations as to search routines and possibilities. Conceptual knowledge, previous search and working domain play important roles. The attitudes have consequences for the objectives concerning use of routines and for the use of search concepts.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the conceptual-based search by incorporating structural ontological information such as concepts and relations. Generally, Semantic-based information retrieval aims to identify relevant information based on the meanings of the query terms or on the context of the terms and the performance of semantic information retrieval is carried out through standard measures-precision and recall. Higher precision leads to the (meaningful) relevant documents obtained and lower recall leads to the less coverage of the concepts.

In this paper, the authors enhance the existing ontology-based indexing proposed by Kohler et al., by incorporating sibling information to the index. The index designed by Kohler et al., contains only super and sub-concepts from the ontology. In addition, in our approach, we focus on two tasks; query expansion and ranking of the expanded queries, to improve the efficiency of the ontology-based search. The aforementioned tasks make use of ontological concepts, and relations existing between those concepts so as to obtain semantically more relevant search results for a given query.

The proposed ontology-based indexing technique is investigated by analysing the coverage of concepts that are being populated in the index. Here, we introduce a new measure called index enhancement measure, to estimate the coverage of ontological concepts being indexed. We have evaluated the ontology-based search for the tourism domain with the tourism documents and tourism-specific ontology. The comparison of search results based on the use of ontology “with and without query expansion” is examined to estimate the efficiency of the proposed query expansion task. The ranking is compared with the ORank system to evaluate the performance of our ontology-based search. From these analyses, the ontology-based search results shows better recall when compared to the other concept-based search systems. The mean average precision of the ontology-based search is found to be 0.79 and the recall is found to be 0.65, the ORank system has the mean average precision of 0.62 and the recall is found to be 0.51, while the concept-based search has the mean average precision of 0.56 and the recall is found to be 0.42.

When the concept is not present in the domain-specific ontology, the concept cannot be indexed. When the given query term is not available in the ontology then the term-based results are retrieved.

In addition to super and sub-concepts, we incorporate the concepts present in same level (siblings) to the ontological index. The structural information from the ontology is determined for the query expansion. The ranking of the documents depends on the type of the query (single concept query, multiple concept queries and concept with relation queries) and the ontological relations that exists in the query and the documents. With this ontological structural information, the search results showed us better coverage of concepts with respect to the query.

In recent years, aceted search has been a well-accepted approach for many academic libraries across the United States. This chapter is based on the author’s dissertation and work of many years on faceted library catalogs. Not to hope to be exhaustive, the author’s aim is to provide sufficient depth and breadth to offer a useful resource to researchers, librarians, and practitioners about faceted search used in library catalogs.

The chapter reviews different aspects of faceted search used in academic libraries, from the theory, the history, to the implementation. It starts with the history of online public access catalogs (OPACs) and how people search with OPACs. Then it introduces the classic facet theory and its relationship with faceted search. At last, various academic research projects on faceted search, especially faceted library catalogs, are briefly reviewed. These projects include both implementation studies and the evaluation studies.

The results indicate that most searchers were able to understand the concept of facets naturally and easily. Compared to text searches, however, faceted searches were complementary and supplemental, and used only by a small group of searchers.

The author hopes that the facet feature has not only been cosmetic but the answer to the call for the next generation catalog for academic libraries. The results of this research are intended to inform librarians and library information technology (IT) staff to improve the effectiveness of the catalogs to help people find information they need more efficiently.

This study aims to explore the influence of topic familiarity on the four stages of college students' learning search process.

This study clarified the effects of topic familiarity on students' learning search process by conducting a simulation experiment based on query formulation, information item selection, information sources and learning output.

The results characterized users' interaction behaviors in increasing topic familiarity through their use of more task descriptions as queries, increased reformulation of queries, construction of more purposeful query formulation, reduced attention to a topic's basic concept content and increased exploration of academic platform contents.

This study proposed three innovative indicators which were proposed to evaluate the effects of topic familiarity on college students' learning search process, and the adopted metrics were useful for observing differences in college students' learning output as their topic familiarity increased. It contributes to the understanding of a user's search process and learning output to support the optimization function of learning-related information search systems and improve their effect on the user's search process for learning.

The purpose of this paper is to review the recent literature about institutional repositories (IRs) including the benefits and possible obstacles of setting up an IR. It will also discuss librarians' and authors' participative roles and open access. In conclusion, the paper aims to consider the future of IRs and finally makes recommendations for their successful implementation in academic institutions.

This paper is based on the recently published literature discussing current trends in IRs; although, some historical reference is also necessary to provide background to the open access movement and the early development of IRs. Given that the paper is an account of the history and current status of IRs, a formal documented methodology is not applicable.

The discussion suggests that in spite of all the obstacles to successful implementation, including associated negative perceptions, IRs have been increasingly recognised as a vital tool for scholarly communication and an important source of institutional visibility and a viable source of institutional knowledge management.

This paper is an expression of opinion about current trends and future applications of IRs. It is not based on any formal methodology. This paper will be useful for librarians, academic staff and academic institutions generally, especially in developing countries where IRs are still in a developmental stage. Therefore, some of the general recommendations may not be as relevant for those institutions with well‐established and flourishing IRs.

The paper is aimed at institutions with low‐use repositories. It can be used to persuade management to establish institutional policies and it can also be helpful in clarifying the role of the library. It is also aimed at institutions considering initial development of an IR. The paper outlines the implications for IR practice for different groups, namely authors, librarians and academic administrative staff. It could, therefore, be used to persuade and influence different sets of stakeholders at institutions with under‐populated or embryonic IRs, about the value of open access, the importance of depositing material and the potential functionality afforded by IR packages.

The paper provides a review of the status of IRs and brings together topics previously reported on in isolation.

Focuses on the records management function in organisations. Describes how organisations should organise their most vital asset, which is information and how they should harness the skills and expertise of their most vital resource, which is their people.

The word “competency” stalked up on the unwary working in the human resources field. The catalyst for its use was Boyatzis's (1982) book The Competent Manager. He triggered the popularity of the term which became de rigueur for the serious consultant in the late 1980s. Unfortunately, while street credibility demanded use of the word, few were certain in their own minds what it meant. This state of confusion has not really abated with the passage of time.

This paper discusses the impact of three selected command language facilities on the man—system interface in relation to operational online information retrieval (IR). The concept of data and information is briefly considered in relation to the cognitive viewpoint and Brookes ‘fundamental equation of information science.’ A cognitive IR model is out‐lined, followed by a discussion of variously experienced searchers' knowledge structures. Recently developed online search facilities such as use of positional operators (free text operations), crossfile searching and term frequency analysis (zooming—as the ES A‐Quest command language calls it) are discussed in relation to the IR process. The cognitive view is applied as the means to describe and emphasise the retrieval possibilities and the state of knowledge involved in the interface processes.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the picture of strategies for information searching and seeking by reviewing the conceptualizations on this topic in the field of library and information science (LIS).

The study draws on Henry Mintzberg’s idea of strategy as plan and strategy as pattern in a stream of actions. Conceptual analysis of 57 LIS investigations was conducted to find out how researchers have approached the above aspects in the characterizations of information search and seeking strategies.

In the conceptualizations of information search and information seeking strategies, the aspect of strategy as plan is explicated most clearly in text-book approaches describing the steps of rational web searching. Most conceptualizations focus on the aspect of strategy as pattern in a stream of actions. This approach places the main emphasis on realized strategies, either deliberate or emergent. Deliberate strategies indicate how information search or information seeking processes were oriented by intentions that existed previously. Emergent strategies indicate how patterns in information seeking and seeking developed in the absence of intentions, or despite them.

The conceptualizations of the shifts in information seeking and searching strategies were excluded from the study. Similarly, conceptualizations of information search or information retrieval tactics were not examined.

The study pioneers by providing an in-depth analysis of the ways in which the key aspects of strategy are conceptualized in the classifications and typologies of information seeking and searching strategies. The findings contribute to the elaboration of the conceptual space of information behaviour research.