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Dissertation Information for Michael George Berger

NAME:
- Michael George Berger

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Library and Information Science

SCHOOL:
- University of California, Berkeley (USA) (1994)

ADVISORS:
- Michael Buckland

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Patrick Wilson
- Peter L. Pirolli

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Information-seeking in the online bibliographic system: An exploratory study

Abstract: The online bibliographic system has become the primary means of end-user access to library collections. This dissertation examines how users search the monograph and periodical databases of a large academic online bibliographic system, the University of California's MELVYL system. The analysis of user behavior and performance is based on a sample of 144 sessions extracted from the MELVYL system transaction logs for a typical week. The analysis divides user interactions into three levels: (1) the individual command issued by the user, (2) the search objective, which includes one or more searches for a single objective, such as a particular book, and (3) the session, which includes one or more search objectives. During the course of the study, it became evident that examining the search objective provided the best clues to the user's intentions and searching performance. By examining the series of user commands that constitute a search objective, it was possible to group search objectives into five search categories: (1) known item, (2) personal author, (3) periodical title, (4) topical, and (5) other, which included a small number of corporate author and series searches. An expert then reviewed each of the users' search objectives and assessed the users' performance. From the assessment of the 445 search objectives in the 144 sessions, performance was judged by the expert as successful (67%), suboptimal (17%), or unsuccessful (16%). The best performance was achieved for known item, personal author, and periodical title searches, and the poorest performance for topical searches. The results of this study suggested a number of conclusions that differ from those in the literature on online bibliographic systems. First, users are more successful than is usually reported in the literature. Secondly, searches that retrieve no results pose less of a problem than previously believed. Thirdly, searches can easily be grouped into a limited number of categories for analysis and improvement. The types of problems users encountered are described. Based on the conclusions of the study, a series of improvement strategies for the online bibliographic system are proposed, as well as suggestions for future work.

MPACT Scores for Michael George Berger

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-05-29 20:32:55

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Students under Michael George Berger

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None