Understanding cultural heritage experts’ information seeking needs

We report on our user study on the information seeking behavior of cultural heritage experts and the sources they use to carry out search tasks. Seventeen experts from nine cultural heritage institutes in the Netherlands were interviewed and asked to answer questionnaires about their daily search activities. The interviews helped us to better understand their search motivations, types, sources and tools. A key finding of our study is that the majority of search tasks involve relatively complex information gathering. This is in contrast to the relatively simple fact-finding oriented support provided by current tools. We describe a number of strategies that experts have developed to overcome the inadequacies of their tools. Finally, based on the analysis, we derive general trends of cultural heritage experts’ information seeking needs and discuss our preliminary experiences with potential solutions

Understanding cultural heritage experts' information seeking needs

htmlabstractWe report on our user study on the information seeking behavior of cultural heritage experts and the sources they use to carry out search tasks. Seventeen experts from nine cultural heritage institutes in the Netherlands were interviewed and asked to answer questionnaires about their daily search activities. The interviews helped us to better understand their search motivations, types, sources and tools. A key finding of our study is that the majority of search tasks involve relatively complex information gathering. This is in contrast to the relatively simple fact-finding oriented support provided by current tools. We describe a number of strategies that experts have developed to overcome the inadequacies of their tools. Finally, based on the analysis, we derive general trends of cultural heritage experts’ information seeking needs and discuss our preliminary experiences with potential solutions

User-Centred Design to Support Exploration and Path Creation in Cultural Heritage Collections

In this paper, we present the results of the user requirements and interface design phase for a prototype system, designed to enhance interaction with cultural heritage collections online through means of a pathway metaphor. We present a single user interaction model that supports various work and information seeking tasks undertaken by both expert and non-expert users within the context of collection exploration and path creation. The user interaction model is shown to enable seamless movement between interaction modes, with the potential over time to encourage deeper engagement and learning

Museums

Museums started exploring the use of computers in the 1960s, and by the 1990s many museums were in the process of adopting an automated work form to manage collec- tions. By the 2000s the Internet had brought new distribution channels, and digitization became harder to avoid. During the last decade, there has been a revision in the work process, where information becomes a key asset and where the relation between the museum and its public changes to favor participatory services. Many of the issues concerning the museum work (acquisition, preservation, exhibition, research and communication) have been thoroughly studied by cultural economists, and their insights can be applied to the digital equivalent, for instance to identify the effective use of resources for an increase in access (offline or online). There are, however, charac- teristic differences in the production, distribution and consumption processes as a result of digitization. These have not always been discussed. This chapter reviews the economic literature on museums to focus on the areas rele- vant to digitization, applying existing theory in areas where no literature example can be found. Issues of intellectual property rights (and copyright) as a form of regulation are outside the scope of this chapter. In cultural economics, museums can be studied from three main perspectives: the museum institution (the ‘firm’ with inputs and outputs), the consumer of museum goods and the role of the government in supporting production of museum goods

Speaking the Same Language: Using Controlled Vocabularies to Search Museum Collections Databases

This study set out to see how controlled vocabularies help people find collections materials in electronic museum databases.It did this by interviewing collections staff from four museums. Eight people from library and non-library work areas at the four museums, who regularly search a museum database in the course of their work, were asked about their experiences with using controlled vocabularies to search. How people used controlled terms depended upon their job tasks and upon their knowledge of terms, past experience and training, and whether they trusted that terms would deliver good search results. Difficulties in using them were identified as being to do with terms themselves; the knowledge of the person searching; and the quality of information in the database. Despite controlled terms rarely being used alone for searching, respondents considered that controlled terminologies are important tools within museum databases for accessing collections. Controlled terms are resource intensive and need institutional backing to work well. Peer support, formal training, staff with database and controlled terms experience, and access to terms lists are some specific factors that would assist controlled vocabularies to work better for the people who search museum databases. Museums need to allocate sufficient financial and administrative resources to controlled terms, if they are serious about improving access to their collections

Leisure Movie Watching: A New Context for Everyday Information Seeking

Information seeking research in Library and Information Science (LIS) has grown to encompass not only occupational situations, but non-work or everyday life situations. This sub-field has come to be known as everyday life information seeking (ELIS). In a discipline that continuously struggles to avoid appearing antiquated to the communities where it operates, researching information seeking in everyday contexts is a way for libraries to remain useful and viable to the general public. This study explores the information seeking behavior of leisure movie watchers. People engage with movies as a form of recreation, entertainment, as well as knowledge. Through semi-structured interviews as well as assessing participants' information horizons, analysis will focus on emerging themes of information source preference as well as process. Results address implications for librarians, systems designers, film scholars, and ELIS researchers developing frameworks for leisure contexts