INFORMATION SEEKING AND THE ELECTRONIC LIBRARY

Niels Ole Pors, Library Link Convenor

User studies relating to the traditional library have been numerous through the past decades. I think it is fair to say that just before the widespread introduction of Internet services in the libraries we had started to be able to generalise about information seeking behaviour in relation to libraries.

Some of the main results of the numerous studies have demonstrated at least the following points in nearly all types of libraries:

• Browsing is the most common information seeking method
• Nearly all the users enter the library in search of a single document and literature on a specified topic, and literature on more unspecified topics
• The user�s information seeking behaviour is multidimensional
• Users do not expect to get all they come for in a single visit
• There is a high degree of exchangeability between the documents the users want
• Only a rather small proportion of the users approach staff for help in finding documents
• Only a rather small proportion of the users make reservations or requests for ILL for the documents that the library holds, but which are on loan
• The immediate availability of documents is probably the single most important factor that influences satisfaction with the library visit.

The list just emphasises some of the findings of user studies. These findings have gone hand in hand with the literature on collection management and collection development. In the past and in the foreseeable future it stresses the importance of concepts such as browsability, timeliness, accuracy, availability, accessibility and so on.

It is now evident - I guess - that the Internet is not just an extension of the traditional library. It is a whole new and ever-changing universe. It is extremely difficult to employ the traditional investigative methods to pursue the relationship between the user and the information on the Net - at least if you want to go a step further than just investigating perceptions and attitudes.

It is more than possible that we will see a huge shift in the research methodology we are using today. One of the reasons is that we are trying to investigate a flexible and unstable target. Another reason - and maybe much more important - is the users� perception of the Internet.

A recent research paper published in the MCB journal: Internet Research by Harry Bruce raises some very important questions in relation to users perception of the internet, their information seeking behaviour, and their degree of satisfaction.It is of course impossible to go into a detailed analysis of the paper, but some interesting results and points in the discussion merit a mention.

The paper showed that academics conceptualise the Internet in different ways. The conceptualisation was in form of an analogy. Three analogies were uncovered. One was the Internet as a road system stressing the connectivity and structure. Another was the Net as a library or store stressing the information aspect. The third was the Net as an organism stressing the ever-developing and living character of the net.

The satisfaction with information seeking on the Net depends to a certain degree which kind of conceptualisation the individual had. Of course it can be problematic to generalise the findings but the fact that mental conceptualisation influences satisfaction is a rather interesting phenomena. It raises the question about how and why mental representations are created and how they conform to actual experiences. Bruce�s paper uses a number of investigative methods from the field of psychology. In some ways the content of the paper relates the research of information seeking to the more traditional research in information retrieval.

It also demonstrates a challenge in relation to the methods we can use when investigation the interaction between user and search system.

Niels Ole Pors
Library Link Convenor

February 2000

Reference

Bruce, Harry (1999), "Perceptions of the Internet: what people think when they search the Internet for information", Internet Research: Networking Applications and Policy, Vol. 9. No. 3, pp. 187 99.

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