The paper reports on the results of the project ‘Evaluating the usage and impact of e-journals in the UK’. Using deep log analysis techniques, we evaluated the use of the Oxford Journals database in regard to life sciences, economics and history by 10 major UK research institutions. The aim of the study was to investigate researchers’ digital behaviour, and to ascertain whether it varied by sub...

Introduction. This study explored graduate students' information behaviour related to their process of inquiry and scholarly activities. Method. In depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with one hundred graduate students representing all disciplines and departments from Carnegie Mellon University. Analysis. Working in pairs, we coded transcripts of interviews into meaningful categori...

It is natural for humans to collaborate while dealing with complex problems. In this article I consider this process of collaboration in the context of information seeking. The study and discussion presented here are driven by two dissatisfactions: (1) the majority of IR systems today do not facilitate collaboration directly, and (2) the concept of collaboration itself is not well-understood. I...

Design engineering projects are reliant on collaborative effort among multiple individuals and/or departments through sharing experiments and data and collaboration on analysis of data and results. Information literacy is one of the competencies that design engineering students are expected to acquire through these courses, given that fact that students with an undergraduate Engineering degree ...

This article argues that existing theory and research on computer-mediated communication (CMC) provide a limited view of information-seeking behavior and proposes a conceptual model for its examination via CMC and new media. Although most CMC environments eliminate or severely reduce nonverbal and contextual information available to address uncertainty, form impressions, and develop relationshi...

The principal task of information professionals is to satisfy the various information needs of users in different contexts, studying their requirements, their seeking habits and their management and use of information. According to information behaviour researchers, information seeking behaviour analysis is the study of the 'activities a person may engage in when identifying their own needs for...

In this paper we look at some of the problems in interacting with best-match retrieval systems. In particular, we examine the areas of interaction, some investigations of the complexity and breadth of interaction and attempts to categorise user's information seeking behaviour. We suggest that one of the diiculties of traditional IR systems in supporting information seeking is the way the inform...

This paper outlines a broad research agenda aimed at examining the manner in which individual differences in information seeking behavior interact with the search task to affect search outcomes. As part of this agenda, we describe specific experimentation that will assess the impact of both Need for Cognition (the tendency to elaborate upon, structure and evaluate information) and Selfand Other...

This paper presents an argument that information systems may support deeper engagement between readers and the text by realizing the capacity for readers to take more active roles while seeking information. Information systems could support collaborative information seeking by displaying shared annotations. Subsequent readers would be able to leverage the semantic information encoded within the...

In various work domains, the collaborative performance of a work-task by a team can lead to a shared information need required to fulfill this task. Many empirical studies identified collaborative information seeking and searching (IS&S) as everyday work patterns in order to solve a shared information need and to benefit from the diverse expertise and experience of the team members. This paper ...