Search results

Social question and answer (social Q&A) sites have become a popular tool for obtaining music information. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what users ask about, what experience the questions convey, and how users specify their questions.

A total of 3,897 music questions from the social Q&A site Yahoo! Answers were categorized according to their question type, user experience, and question specification.

The music questions were diverse with (dis)approval (42 percent), factual (21 percent), and advice (15 percent) questions as the most frequent types. Advice questions were the longest and roughly twice as long as (dis)approval and factual questions. The user experience associated with the questions was most often pragmatic (24 percent) or senso-emotional (12 percent). Pragmatic questions were typically about the user’s own performance of music, while senso-emotional questions were about finding music for listening. Notably, half of the questions did not convey information about the user experience but the absence of such information did not reduce the number of answers. In specifying the questions, the most frequent information was about the music context and the user context.

This study suggests a division of labor between social Q&A sites and search engines for music information retrieval. It should be noted that the study is restricted to one social Q&A site.

Social Q&A sites provide an opportunity for studying what information real users seek about music and what information they specify to retrieve it, thereby elucidating the role of social Q&A in music information seeking.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study of how research literature addresses researchers' attitudes toward data repository use. In particular, the authors are interested in how the term data sharing is defined, how data repository use is reported and whether there is need for greater clarity and specificity of terminology.

To study how the literature addresses researcher data repository use, relevant studies were identified by searching Library Information Science and Technology Abstracts, Library and Information Science Source, Thomas Reuters' Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus. A total of 62 studies were identified for inclusion in this meta-evaluation.

The study shows a need for greater clarity and consistency in the use of the term data sharing in future studies to better understand the phenomenon and allow for cross-study comparisons. Furthermore, most studies did not address data repository use specifically. In most analyzed studies, it was not possible to segregate results relating to sharing via public data repositories from other types of sharing. When sharing in public repositories was mentioned, the prevalence of repository use varied significantly.

Researchers' data sharing is of great interest to library and information science research and practice to inform academic libraries that are implementing data services to support these researchers. This study explores how the literature approaches this issue, especially the use of data repositories, the use of which is strongly encouraged. This paper identifies the potential for additional study focused on this area.

The PICCH research project contributes to opening a dialogue between cultural heritage archives and users. Hence, the users are identified and their information needs, the search strategies they apply and the search challenges they experience are uncovered.

A combination of questionnaires and interviews is used for collection of data. Questionnaire data were collected from users of three different audiovisual archives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two user groups: (1) scholars searching information for research projects and (2) archivists who perform their own scholarly work and search information on behalf of others.

The questionnaire results show that the archive users mainly have an academic background. Hence, scholars and archivists constitute the target group for in-depth interviews. The interviews reveal that their information needs are multi-faceted and match the information need typology by Ingwersen. The scholars mainly apply collection-specific search strategies but have in common primarily doing keyword searching, which they typically plan in advance. The archivists do less planning owing to their knowledge of the collections. All interviewees demonstrate domain knowledge, archival intelligence and artefactual literacy in their use and mastering of the archives. The search challenges they experience can be characterised as search system complexity challenges, material challenges and metadata challenges.

The paper provides a rare insight into the complexity of the search situation of cultural heritage archives, and the users’ multi-facetted information needs and hence contributes to the dialogue between the archives and the users.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study of how the test instrument of a simulated work task situation is used in empirical evaluations of interactive information retrieval (IIR) and reported in the research literature. In particular, the author is interested to learn whether the requirements of how to employ simulated work task situations are followed, and whether these requirements call for further highlighting and refinement.

In order to study how simulated work task situations are used, the research literature in question is identified. This is done partly via citation analysis by use of Web of Science®, and partly by systematic search of online repositories. On this basis, 67 individual publications were identified and they constitute the sample of analysis.

The analysis reveals a need for clarifications of how to use simulated work task situations in IIR evaluations. In particular, with respect to the design and creation of realistic simulated work task situations. There is a lack of tailoring of the simulated work task situations to the test participants. Likewise, the requirement to include the test participants’ personal information needs is neglected. Further, there is a need to add and emphasise a requirement to depict the used simulated work task situations when reporting the IIR studies.

Insight about the use of simulated work task situations has implications for test design of IIR studies and hence the knowledge base generated on the basis of such studies.

Simulated work task situations are widely used in IIR studies, and the present study is the first comprehensive study of the intended and unintended use of this test instrument since its introduction in the late 1990’s. The paper addresses the need to carefully design and tailor simulated work task situations to suit the test participants in order to obtain the intended authentic and realistic IIR under study.

This paper presents a set of basic components which constitutes the experimental setting intended for the evaluation of interactive information retrieval (IIR) systems, the aim of which is to facilitate evaluation of IIR systems in a way which is as close as possible to realistic IR processes. The experimental setting consists of three components: (1) the involvement of potential users as test persons; (2) the application of dynamic and individual information needs; and (3) the use of multidimensional and dynamic relevance judgements. Hidden under the information need component is the essential central sub‐component, the simulated work task situation, the tool that triggers the (simulated) dynamic information needs. This paper also reports on the empirical findings of the metaevaluation of the application of this sub‐component, the purpose of which is to discover whether the application of simulated work task situations to future evaluation of IIR systems can be recommended. Investigations are carried out to determine whether any search behavioural differences exist between test persons‘ treatment of their own real information needs versus simulated information needs. The hypothesis is that if no difference exists one can correctly substitute real information needs with simulated information needs through the application of simulated work task situations. The empirical results of the meta‐evaluation provide positive evidence for the application of simulated work task situations to the evaluation of IIR systems. The results also indicate that tailoring work task situations to the group of test persons is important in motivating them. Furthermore, the results of the evaluation show that different versions of semantic openness of the simulated situations make no difference to the test persons’ search treatment.

The purpose of this paper is to report a study of order effect in interactive information retrieval (IIR) studies. The phenomenon of order effect is well-known, and it is the main reason why searches are permuted (counter-balanced) between test participants in IIR studies. However, the phenomenon is not yet fully understood or investigated in relation to IIR; hence the objective is to increase the knowledge of this phenomenon in the context of IIR as it has implications for test design of IIR studies.

Order effect is studied via partly a literature review and partly an empirical IIR study. The empirical IIR study is designed as a classic between-groups design. The IIR search behaviour was logged and complementary post-search interviews were conducted.

The order effect between groups and within search tasks were measured against nine classic IIR performance parameters of search interaction behaviour. Order effect is seen with respect to three performance parameters (website changes, visit of webpages, and formulation of queries) shown by an increase in activity on the last performed search. Further the theories with respect to motivation, fatigue, and the good-subject effect shed light on how and why order effect may affect test participants’ IR system interaction and search behaviour.

Insight about order effect has implications for test design of IIR studies and hence the knowledge base generated on the basis of such studies. Due to the limited sample of 20 test participants (Library and Information Science (LIS) students) inference statistics is not applicable; hence conclusions can be drawn from this sample of test participants only.

Only few studies in LIS focus on order effect and none from the perspective of IIR.

The paper describes the ideas and assumptions underlying the development of a new method for the evaluation and testing of interactive information retrieval (IR) systems, and reports on the initial tests of the proposed method. The method is designed to collect different types of empirical data, i.e. cognitive data as well as traditional systems performance data. The method is based on the novel concept of a ‘simulated work task situation’ or scenario and the involvement of real end users. The method is also based on a mixture of simulated and real information needs, and involves a group of test persons as well as assessments made by individual panel members. The relevance assessments are made with reference to the concepts of topical as well as situational relevance. The method takes into account the dynamic nature of information needs which are assumed to develop over time for the same user, a variability which is presumed to be strongly connected to the processes of relevance assessment.

The paper introduces bibliometrics to the research area of knowledge organization – more precisely in relation to construction and maintenance of thesauri. As such, the paper reviews related work that has been of inspiration for the assembly of a semi‐automatic, bibliometric‐based, approach for construction and maintenance. Similarly, the paper discusses the methodical considerations behind the approach. Eventually, the semi‐automatic approach is used to verify the applicability of bibliometric methods as a supplement to construction and maintenance of thesauri. In the context of knowledge organization, the paper outlines two fundamental approaches to knowledge organization, that is, the manual intellectual approach and the automatic algorithmic approach. Bibliometric methods belong to the automatic algorithmic approach, though bibliometrics do have special characteristics that are substantially different from other methods within this approach.