Search strategies in domain-specific image retrieval: a pilot study

This paper describes a prototype World Wide Web-accessible database of slide images developed for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication Library, and a pilot study conducted with prospective users of the slide images. The purpose of the pilot study was to observe information-seeking behaviors and strategies with reference to image data, and to investigate the role of domain expertise in determining these behaviors and strategies. Five journalism faculty members and six journalism students completed retrieval tasks using the slide database. They then completed a questionnaire about their experiences. Results showed that keyword or full text searching is preferred over browsing for structured retrieval tasks, and that the students were more likely to use the thumbnail image to pare down a result set, while faculty were more likely to use the text descriptions for this purpose. Suggestions for further study are given

Web Search Effectiveness: An Information Integration Perspective

Let us begin with a brief analysis of the stated topic of this workshop: user perspectives on Web search effectiveness. Clearly one of the goals of this workshop is to bring a variety of perspectives to bear on the issue of how to evaluate Web search effectiveness. This paper does not deal with the evaluation issue per se, but rather tries to locate evaluation of Web search effectiveness within the context of the user cognitive processes we are trying to support as they interact with complex, heterogeneous information sources on the Web. Rapid adoption of the Web over the past decade by both content producers and information consumers has resulted in greater volumes of content on an ever-widening array of subjects to be available to larger numbers of users. Clearly we are past the stage at which the primary challenge is being able to put the information where the public can have access to it; now the challenges include making it possible for the user to find the information she wants, and contributing to the user’s ability to make sense of the information she finds. The search engine companies (Google being the most notable and successful) are working to improve the process of finding relevant information; the area that is the concern of this review has to do with what the user does with the information after it has been found, as this clearly will have an impact o

The Ethics of Studying Online Communities: Challenges to Research Design and Data Collection

Web sites, like online newspapers, magazines, and blogs, have been providing their readers with online forums as ways to voice their perspectives. These Web sites are often seen as online communities and have recently gained much attention from researchers. Due to the nature of these online communities, however, and the dynamic nature of the Internet, we lack systematic methodologies for collecting and analyzing online information (Zhou, Qin, Lai, & Chen, 2007; FTC. 2008). One of the challenges to studying this phenomenon is how to carry out a research project in a timely manner. The nature of online communities is dynamic and, therefore, requires a dynamic research approach. Researchers interested in online communities, however, have to comply with Institutional Review Board (IRB) regulations at their institutions which do not support a dynamic research approach. IRB regulations were created to support the kinds of static research approaches that were common in the pre-Web era. Curry (2005) reported that she waited 18 months to get IRB approval for her project on gay and lesbian youth which involved unobtrusive observations of reference services. Curry\u27s example indicates that the process of applying for IRB approval is rigorous and time‐consuming. As such, it often slows down the progress of a proposed project, especially one interested in studying users participating in online communities. In order to capture the essence of the dynamic issues surrounding online users, researchers need to adopt new approaches to research design and data collection that support dynamic, fast-paced research. In addition, these new research approaches must meet IRB requirements and must be accepted by the research community

Statistical Metadata Needs during Integration Tasks

As part of an NSF-funded effort to work toward a national statistical knowledge network, we have been working to determine what elements of statistical metadata are most crucial for end users as they attempt to find and use data from US Federal statistical websites. We report here preliminary findings from a study conducted to compare how experts and end users interact with statistical data and discuss the implications of these findings on the construction of architectures and interfaces designed to integrate statistical data across agencies

A Survey of Complex Object Technologies for Digital Libraries

Many early web-based digital libraries (DLs) had implicit assumptions reflected in their architecture that the unit of focus in the DL (frequently "reports" or "e-prints") would only be manifested in a single, or at most a few, common file formats such as PDF or PostScript. DLs have now matured to the point where their contents are commonly no longer simple files. Complex objects in DLs have emerged in response to various requirements, including: simple aggregation of formats and supporting files, bundling additional information to aid digital preservation, creating opaque digital objects for e-commerce applications, and the incorporation of dynamic services with the traditional data files. We examine a representative (but not necessarily exhaustive) number of current and recent historical web-based complex object technologies and projects that are applicable to DLs: Aurora, Buckets, ComMentor, Cryptolopes, Digibox, Document Management Alliance, FEDORA, Kahn-Wilensky Framework Digital Objects, Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard, Multivalent Documents, Open eBooks, VERS Encapsulated Objects, and the Warwick Framework