Who are the users of a video search system?

ABSTRACT Formulating requirements for a video search system can be a challenging task when everyone is a possible user. This paper explores the possibilities of classifying users by creating a Profile Matrix, placing users on two axes: experience and goal-directedness. This enables us to describe the characteristics of the subgroups and investigate differences between the different groups. We created Profile Matrices by classifying 850 respondents of a survey regarding a requirements study for a video search system. We conclude that the Profile Matrix indeed enables us to classify subgroups of users and describe their characteristics. The current research is limited to descriptions of subgroups and analysis of differences between these subgroups. In the future, we want to research what these differences mean with regard to the users’ performance and acceptance of a video search system and explore the use of a profile matrix for other types of search systems

Dutch Journalism in the Digital Age

With an ever-growing supply of online sources, information to produce news stories seems to be one mouse click away. But in what way do Dutch journalists actually use computer-aided research tools? This article provides an inventory of the ways journalists use digital (re)sources and explores the differences between experts and novices. We applied a combined methodological approach by conducting an ethnographic study as well as a survey. Results show that Dutch journalists use relatively few digital tools to find online information. However, journalists who can be considered experts in the field of information retrieval use a wider range of search engines and techniques, arrive quicker at the angle to their story, and are better at finding information related to this angle. This allows them to spend more time on writing their news story. Novices are more dependent on the information provided by others

Just Google It. Digital Research Practices of Humanities Scholars

The transition from analogue to digital archives and the recent explosion of online content offers researchers novel ways of engaging with data. The crucial question for ensuring a balance between the supply and demand-side of data is whether this trend connects to existing scholarly practices and to the average search skills of researchers. To gain insight into this process we conducted a survey among nearly three hundred (N= 288) humanities scholars in the Netherlands and Belgium with the aim of finding answers to the following questions: 1) To what extent are digital databases and archives used? 2) What are the preferences in search functionalities 3) Are there differences in search strategies between novices and experts of information retrieval? Our results show that while scholars actively engage in research online they mainly search for text and images. General search systems such as Google and JSTOR are predominant, while large-scale collections such as Europeana are rarely consulted. Searching with keywords is the dominant search strategy and advanced search options are rarely used. When comparing novice and more experienced searchers, the first tend to have a more narrow selection of search engines, and mostly use keywords. Our overall findings indicate that Google is the key player among available search engines. This dominant use illustrates the paradoxical attitude of scholars toward Google: while provenance and context are deemed key academic requirements, the workings of the Google algorithm remain unclear. We conclude that Google introduces a black box into digital scholarly practices, indicating scholars will become increasingly dependent on such black boxed algorithms. This calls for a reconsideration of the academic principles of provenance and context.Abstract The transition from analogue to digital archives and the recent explosion of online content offers researchers novel ways of engaging with data. The crucial question for ensuring a balance between the supply and demand-side of data is whether this trend connects to existing scholarly practices and to the average search skills of researchers. To gain insight into this process we conducted a survey among nearly three hundred (N= 288) humanities scholars in the Netherlands and Belgium with the aim of finding answers to the following questions: 1) To what extent are digital databases and archives used? 2) What are the preferences in search functionalities 3) Are there differences in search strategies between novices and experts of information retrieval? Our results show that while scholars actively engage in research online they mainly search for text and images. General search systems such as Google and JSTOR are predominant, while large-scale collections such as Europeana are rarely consulted. Searching with keywords is the dominant search strategy and advanced search options are rarely used. When comparing novice and more experienced searchers, the first tend to have a more narrow selection of search engines, and mostly use keywords. Our overall findings indicate that Google is the key player among available search engines. This dominant use illustrates the paradoxical attitude of scholars toward Google: while provenance and context are deemed key academic requirements, the workings of the Google algorithm remain unclear. We conclude that Google introduces a black box into digital scholarly practices, indicating scholars will become increasingly dependent on such black boxed algorithms. This calls for a reconsideration of the academic principles of provenance and context