Search results

The purpose of this paper is to describe an evaluation tool, “The History of the Future” exercise, which can be used at the beginning of a project or service development to clarify variation in participants' presuppositions and expectations.

The paper describes what the tool is, the context in which it is useful, how it is presented and administered, and what kinds of results can be expected. It places it within the corpus of qualitative methods, relating it particularly to phenomenography.

A case study of the application of the method is used to illustrate its use and the results, which it can generate. A complex European Commission funded research and development project, eMapps.com, provided a challenging environment for its use and helped to verify its utility.

The exercise is a particularly useful activity at the beginning of a large or complex project, which has multiple stakeholders, especially when they form a widely dispersed community. It addresses the fact that different stakeholders may come to the project with different understandings, expectations and priorities, and aims to provide focus and common understanding of project aims and objectives.

Evaluations rarely start early enough in a project to exert significant influence on outcomes. The History of the Future exercise is one way to provide very early information on differing perceptions and goals among those involved and so to establish full agreement on purpose, tasks and desired outcomes.

To compare the resource discovery network (RDN) hubs and Google as search tools within an academic context, taking into account well documented user information seeking behaviours. To find out whether the students' apparent preference for search engines as an information retrieval tool means that they might miss quality online resources to support their academic work.

With key factors about user behaviour and service provision in mind, to conduct a small study to see what students are actually presented with when they search for online information for their academic studies, by comparing search results from the RDN hubs and Google.

Analysis of results suggests that the exclusive use of search engines will lead to users missing the high quality resources provided by the RDN hubs, that if users use subject gateways in the same way that they use search engines they are likely to miss much that the hubs' sophisticated structures and search options have to offer them, and that search engines do provide access to quality resources.

A larger scale investigation of the level of sophistication of searching behaviour among hubs users is called for.

The study emphasizes the need for online information service developers to take into account well documented user behaviours when designing new services.

The paper will be of value to researchers in the fields of information retrieval and information seeking behaviour, and to developers and providers of online information services to the academic community.

The purpose of this paper is to examine and provide an insight into Canadian post‐secondary institutional repositories (IRs) with respect to user interface features and knowledge organization systems (KOS) used.

The approach is to explore all Canadian post‐secondary institutions and their user interfaces to establish the type of searching and browsing features they have used and whether or not they have made use of KOS such as subject heading lists or classification schemes.

A directory of 27 IRs in Canada is created. Incorporation of KOS in institutional repository is evaluated. The examination is focuses on accessibility, searching, KOS use, and retrieval. Evaluation shows that few IRs have incorporated complex KOS such as controlled vocabularies. Browsing and searching options are available, but user interfaces are usually not modified to enhance information retrieval.

This is the first paper examining Canadian IRs from the perspectives of searching, browsing and the use of KOS.

Reports on the CERLIM‐organized conference “Libraries Without Walls 7”, Lesvos, Greece, 14‐18 September 2007.

Reports from the viewpoint of a conference participant and presenter of a paper and gives an overview of the whole conference with more detail on some of the presented papers.

The conference was worthwhile and enlightening, revealing the diversity of current developments in library service delivery worldwide.

Of interest as a review of the conference.