PurposeThis study looks at how a small group of university students used the new library web scale search discovery tool, Summon, and whether they encountered any difficulties pertaining to navigation, ease of use and the quality of the search results.
Design/methodology/approachResearchers conducted a series of usability studies in which students were observed as they conducted some typical library resource searches using the new discovery search platform.
FindingsThe paper analyses the data, describes and reports the findings of the usability tests. The study found that the new homepage design of providing a single search box was an effective interface for users. The students found a single search box discovery solution was simple to use, and seemed to deliver satisfactory results on a selection of typical library search tasks.The study confirms some of the promise for web scale discovery, but points to new lines of enquiry in relation to the nature of assistance students will need in the future, particularly in relation to their need to evaluate information.
Originality/valueWeb scale discovery searching is an innovation in the online searching of library collections.The study revealed how a small sample of end-users experienced the new type of searching and, serendipitously identified a new issue that warrants further investigation.
PROBLEMS of getting constituted may perhaps be ranked among a country's constitutional problems. Malaysia had its share of antenatal complications. First, there was the task, undertaken by the local government, of selling to the electorate of Singapore the desirability of mergingwith the Federation of Malaya. This ended, so far as overt political formalities were concerned, with a referendum in August 1962 in which the voters were compelled to choose one of three modes of merger: as a State on special terms negotiated by the Singapore Government, as a State on equal terms with the original eleven States of the Federation or as a State on terms not less favourable than those to be settled later for the Borneo territories. The only method of objecting to the merger on principle, voting being compulsory, was to drop a spoilt paper in the ballot box. 1 Some people did this, but 70 per cent, voted for the Singapore Government's proposals. Thus did the Singaporeans* who are mostly of Chinese extraction, demonstrate their readiness to be subsumed into a polity where official policy is to grant special privileges to Malayans of the Malay community. Secondly, the Borneo territories had to be persuaded. After a favourable fact-finding survey by the Cobbold Commission and favourable elections, after an armed rebellion in Brunei, after much negotiation in various places and after a United Nations inquiry, Brunei stayed out and Sarawak and North Borneo (now renamed Sabah) joined in. Thus was the influx of Chinese Singaporeans counterbalanced by non-Chinese Borneans. 1 t This is the text of a lecture delivered in the Middle Temple Hall on March 16, 1964, under the auspices of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.