Core Competency J
The following statement and submitted evidence show my understanding of the fundamental concepts of information-seeking behavior.
The essence of librarianship or any other information profession is to organize the information under their care, and devise the systems that would ensure quick and accurate retrieval of the information when needed. Before the arrival of computers, the fundamental requirement for any information retrieval system was efficiency in recall of the most relevant documents. The information-seeking behavior or attitude of the general public toward these organization and retrieval systems... MORE>>
Some of the evidence documents are presented as HTML pages, but most of them are in iPaper format, which requires ADOBE FLASH PLAYER. Clicking on [PDF] link will open the same documents in ADOBE ACROBAT READER.
Evidence 1 :: What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of ... a system [with adjustable interface] in a public and an academic library?
The answer to this final exam question in the Information and Society class, Spring of 2005, shows my understanding of the fundamental concepts of information-seeking behavior and their consequences for a web site development.
The advantages of the individually adjustable interfaces are deceptively obvious. The interface could be individually configured; its performance could be maximized therefore better serving individual needs and style of the user. However, research in the area of interface usability – in particular the findings of Jacob Nielson and Ann P. Bishop at all. – found that people have a well-established system, ways and means to acquire, assess and use information and that they are not willing to surrender the comfort of the known for the sake of few interface gadgets. The goal of every well-designed interface should be the simplicity and clarity of function, therefore minimizing the learning curve required from the user to interact with the interface.
Evidence 2 :: Experimental Study Critique: Individual differences and the conundrums of user-centered design [PDF]
This assay was written as an assignment in the Research Methods class, Spring of 2007, and shows my understanding of fundamental concepts of information-seeking behavior.
The focus of the experimental study, reviewed in this paper, are individual differences among users of the virtual environment and the possibilities to overcome those differences using various software. The specific experiments focused on the perceptual speed and spatial scanning of users, and tested the hypotheses that there would be a significant interplay between cognitive abilities of the user and design features of the software. Two experiments were performed – one testing users’ interaction with the interface, and the other testing the attitude of users toward customizing the interface. The extrapolated results of the experiments point toward the compensation approach as the good way to design the interface in customized information system. But it was unclear how to apply this finding and achieve a match between user characteristics, tasks they need to perform and interface they need to use. The paper argues that it was unclear what exactly was tested in the experiments – interface or user – and that even the use of sophisticated statistics did not make up for the vague hypothesis and weak intellectual foundations of the experiments.
Evidence 3 :: Survey Critique: Primarily history in America: How U.S. historians search for primary materials at the dawn of the digital age
This essay was written as an assignment in the Research Methods class, Spring of 2007, and shows my understanding of fundamental concepts of the information-seeking behavior of particular user group.
In 2002 the Primarily History project, the international comparative study, examined the information-seeking behaviors of historians in the United States and the United Kingdom. The survey report, reviewed in this paper, presented the analysis of the results gained from the survey of searching habits of historians teaching the United States history in universities across the US. The survey was conducted on two occasions and included 300 participants. The results show that the most important source materials for historians were period newspapers and unpublished correspondence, and that the historians made very limited use of on-line resources, including the Internet. The report concludes that there is quite a mismatch between the searching habits of users and the resources offered by the librarian and archival community. The reports call for the archivist community to engage in more vigorous education about available resources. The critique welcomes the research and find collected results extremely interesting. However, it calls in to question the conclusion that the problem could be solved solely with the better education of its primary users.
This web site was developed to satisfy the graduation requirements for
the School for Library and Information Science at San Jose State University California
Text, design, and digital imaging by Vlasta Radan