Information Seeking by Humanities Scholars

This paper investigates the information seeking of humanities academics and scholars using digital libraries. It furthers existing work by updating our knowledge of the information seeking techniques used by humanities scholars, where the current work predates the wide availability of the Internet. We also report some of the patterns observed in query and term usage by humanities scholars, and relate this to the patterns they report in their own information seeking and the problems that they encounter. This insight is used to reveal the current gap between the skills of information seekers and the technologies that they use. Searches for ‘discipline terms' prove to be particularly problematic.

[1]  David Ellis,et al.  Modelling the information seeking patterns of engineers and research scientists in an industrial environment , 1997, J. Documentation.

[2]  Barbara M. Wildemuth,et al.  The effects of domain knowledge on search tactic formulation , 2004, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[3]  Helen R. Tibbo.  Primarily history: historians and the search for primary source materials , 2002, JCDL '02.

[4]  Chaomei Chen,et al.  Visual interfaces to digital libraries , 2002, JCDL '02.

[5]  William R. Hersh,et al.  Managing Gigabytes—Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images (Second Edition) , 2001, Information Retrieval.

[6]  George Buchanan,et al.  Exploring Small Screen Digital Library Access with the Greenstone Digital Library , 2002, ECDL.

[7]  Amanda Spink,et al.  Real life, real users, and real needs: a study and analysis of user queries on the web , 2000, Inf. Process. Manag..

[8]  Marcia J. Bates,et al.  A profile of end‐user searching behavior by humanities scholars: The Getty Online Searching Project Report No. 2 , 1993 .

[9]  Ian H. Witten,et al.  Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images , 1999 .

[10]  Ethelene Whitmire,et al.  Disciplinary differences and undergraduates' information-seeking behavior , 2002, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[11]  Wendy T. Lucas,et al.  Form and function: The impact of query term and operator usage on Web search results , 2002, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[12]  Ann Blandford,et al.  Digital Libraries in a Clinical Setting: Friend or Foe? , 2001, ECDL.

[13]  Ingrid Hsieh-Yee,et al.  Effects of Search Experience and Subject Knowledge on the Search Tactics of Novice and Experienced Searchers. , 1993 .

[14]  S. Wiberley,et al.  Patterns of Information Seeking in the Humanities , 1989 .

[15]  Rebecca Watson-Boone.  The Information Needs and Habits of Humanities Scholars. , 1994 .

[16]  Stephen E. Wiberley,et al.  Time and Technology: A Decade-Long Look at Humanists' Use of Electronic Information Technology , 2000 .

[17]  Ian H. Witten,et al.  Managing gigabytes (2nd ed.): compressing and indexing documents and images , 1999 .

[18]  Marcia J. Bates,et al.  The Getty End-User Online Searching Project in the Humanities: Report No. 6: Overview and Conclusions , 1996 .

[19]  Nicholas J. Belkin,et al.  A case for interaction: a study of interactive information retrieval behavior and effectiveness , 1996, CHI.

[20]  David Ellis,et al.  A behavioural model for information retrieval system design , 1989, J. Inf. Sci..

[21]  George Buchanan,et al.  Spatial Hypertext as a Reader Tool in Digital Libraries , 2002, Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries.