Search results

Purpose — We assert that researchers developing new web interaction tools should consider an array of user motives beyond query-based information retrieval. This chapter reports on two probes used to investigate user activities that go beyond search as traditionally conceived.

Design/methodology — This chapter reviews research on user experiences with search engines and general web use. It then describes the design and case study of cards and pebbles, two search engine-based probes developed to help elicit new concepts for web-based experiences.

Findings — Participants reflect on their experiences with the probes and offer ideas regarding how to incrementally shift the traditional search paradigm and conceive of the web in new ways.

Implications/value — This investigation serves as a starting point by offering criteria that should be considered when designing new ‘beyond search’ tools.

The Sussex OPAC is based on the Public Query software of Geac Computers Ltd's circulation module, but with substantial local modification. Coverage of loanable items in stock has reached 75 per cent, and the OPAC is now considered as the library's major catalogue. The OPAC displays very detailed copy availability information, including real‐time loan status and information about copies which are missing or on order: this is greatly valued by the library's users. Eighteen public terminals handle between 6,000 and 7,000 searches a day in term. Searches may be made by an author/title derived search key (‘Quick’ search), by author or other name, by title, by keyword/keyphrase, or by classmark; 70 per cent of searches are by routes which were not available in the card catalogues. The main stages in the development of the OPAC are described and a search is illustrated. Usage logs have been used to analyse user behaviour and to improve the design of the OPAC. User education methods, the campus‐wide extension of the service, and possibilities for future development are described.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by the Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Dept. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription for 1982 for VINE is £20 for UK subscribers and £23 for overseas subscribers — the subscription year runs from January to December. The 1983 subscription will be £22 for UK and £25 for overseas — VINE is available in either paper copy or microfiche and all back issues are available on microfiche.

The Minimal‐input Cataloguing System which is under development at Loughborough University of Technology Library, has had a number of modifications made to the original plans and a new report is to be prepared. Meanwhile, it would seem appropriate at least to outline the aims, nature and present status of the system.

VINE is a Very Informal NEwsletter produced three or four times a year by the Information Officer for Library Automation and financed by the British Library Research and Development Department. It is issued free of charge on request to interested librarians, systems staff and library college lecturers. VINEs objective is to provide an up‐to‐date picture of work being done in U.K. library automation projects which has not been reported elsewhere.

Support sought for changes to copyright law EIIA members have been asked to support a change in the copyright laws to permit some ‘fair use’ copying of software. A proposal is likely to go to the European Commission this month. Meanwhile, Memoranda of Mutal Understanding have been signed with the United States' HA and Japan's JICOA, to co‐operate in activities such as supporting the free flow of information.

A LIBRARY that moves towards becoming an information centre mirrors those attempts made in the political sphere to construct a community out of a fragmented reality, rife with escapism. Mircea Eliade, in discussing the myth of the élite, calls the fragmentation which modern, man experiences part of a complex process, the cyclic mythological behaviour characteristic of archaic and traditional societies where Chaos is followed by a new creation.

There has been a considerable investment of time, money and effort in recent years in the creation of bibliographic records of books. The results are clearly visible. We now have AACR2, MARC records and a whole range of library networks—whether OCLC, RLIN et al in the States, or BLCMP, SWALCAP et al in Britain. We have a new edition of the Dewey Classification Scheme and a new edition of the Bliss Classification scheme. Yet despite all this effort, the databases created, whether an individual library's catalogue or the full set of MARC records on BLAISE, are of strictly limited value.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by Tony McSean, Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription to VINE is £10 per year and the subscription period runs from January to December.

Introduction Since the earliest transaction monitoring studies, researchers have encountered the boundaries that define transaction log analysis as a methodology for studying the use of online information retrieval systems. Because, among other reasons, transaction log databases contain relatively few fields and lack sufficient retrieval tools, students of transaction log data have begun to ask as many questions about what transaction logs cannot reveal as they have asked about what transaction logs can reveal. Researchers have conducted transaction monitoring studies to understand the objective phenomena embodied in this statement: “Library patrons enter searches into online information retrieval systems.” Transaction log data effectively describe what searches patrons enter and when they enter them, but they don't reflect, except through inference, who enters the searches, why they enter them, and how satisfied they are with their results.