Understanding target users of a digital reference library

Abstract

Through an investigation of the needs and practices of researchers in the humanities and social sciences, we identify key issues in the use of an online digital reference library, the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative's "Support for the Learner: What, When, Where and Who." In this poster we present an examination of results from survey data and user tasks, and discuss implications for future design and implementation based on our findings.

Understanding cultural heritage experts' information seeking needs

“…This is consistent with research found in other domains such as in [14,17]. It is rarely the case that experts rely on only one source of information.…”

“…This is also the case in other domains [14]. Generally these trusted sources are agreed upon within a specific community.…”

“…Even though we focus our study on the cultural heritage domain, we found several issues that indicate general trends in information seeking behavior that may be relevant and apply to other domains, such as humanity, social sciences and professionals [2,14,17,20].…”