Searching for information in an online public access catalogue (OPAC): the impacts of information search expertise on the use of Boolean operators

Abstract

Boolean systems still constitute most of the installed base of online public access catalogues (OPACs) in the French universities even if many studies have shown that Boolean operators are not frequently used by 'non-librarian' users (by contrast with professional librarians). The first study examined the use of Boolean operators by French university students; In the second study, elaborated to evaluate the impact of information search expertise on this use, Boolean operators are explicitly presented and participants were explicitly invited to use them. We assumed that university students would not frequently use the operators in searching, and that even if they were explicitly invited to make use of them. Results obtained with the first study based on transaction logs analyses confirmed that French university students did not frequently use Boolean operators. The impact of information search expertise, analysed in the second study, compared three levels of expertise: Novice (university students), intermediate (future professional librarians), and expert (professional librarians). Results showed that, even if the three groups were invited to use Boolean operators, this use increased significantly with the level of information search expertise. University students, if they manage procedural functions of connectives in natural language, do not always manage the whole set of procedural functions carried by such connectives when used in the documentary language. So, the relevance of presenting explicit Boolean operators in the OPACs when users are 'non-librarians' is questioned.

Surfing the web – Recreation or resource? Exploring how young people in the UK use the Internet as an advice portal for problems with a legal dimension

“…Consequently, although younger respondents who used the Internet reported relatively high use of telephone and face-to-face advice, usage was lower than the majority of other age groups (and particularly groups with high rates of Internet access). But, whether young people are unsure as to what to look for (Bilal, 2002;Dinet et al, 2004) or unsure of how to navigate sites (Puustinen and Rouet, 2008), even when these are geared towards them (Lambley, 2007), is not deducible from our findings, and furthermore, may not be homogeneously causative. Importantly, the reduced success young people have with finding information online, coupled with their reduced inclination to go onto obtain advice face-to-face when compared with other age groups may suggest that young people are less persistent in obtaining advice or are easily disparaged.…”

“…Even those with higher education may still face challenges, Landauer's et al (1992) study, although now somewhat dated, concluded that the average [US] college educated person was unable to form a correct Boolean expression for even a simple case and that casual searchers often know little about a topic and its vocabulary. In specific relation to young people, Puustinen and Rouet (2008) have found that these users have trouble selecting relevant categories from web-like menus, struggle to generate an appropriate set of key words when utilising search functions, and rarely think to use synonyms or alternative words upon initial failure (see also Bilal, 2002;Dinet et al, 2004). These findings suggest that difficulties may be faced, not just in the initial discovery of relevant websites, but also finding information contained within websites.…”

“Computer what's your favourite colour?” children's information‐seeking strategies in the classroom

“…Early children's information seeking behaviour studies explored use of electronic databases (i.e., Spavold, 1990), OPACs (Online Public Access Catalogues) (i.e., Dinet, Favart, & Passerault, 2004) and digital libraries (i.e., Druin et al, 2001Druin et al, , 2003. Many researchers report the observation that children across a wide range of ages experience difficulties with many facets of digital information seeking and the findings of these numerous studies show that technological capability, searching, document selection, and triage all play a part in the issues experienced by children.…”

Modern information retrieval: the concepts and technology behind search

“…Commercial text search systems before the Web regularly supported Boolean operators and command-based syntax, and in fact did not generally support keyword queries well. However, Boolean operators and command-line syntax have been shown time and again to be difficult for most users to understand, and those who try to use them often do so incorrectly [30,45,47,56,58].…”