Web search behavior of Internet experts and newbies

Hölscher, Christoph; Strube, Gerhard

doi:10.1016/s1389-1286(00)00031-1

Cited by 442 publications

(341 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Expert searchers also use more synonyms (Hsieh-Yee, 1993;Vakkari, 2001); however, there is no consensus about their use of complex search expressions involving truncations, Boolean operators and phrase searching. Holscher and Strube (2000) and Chu and Law (2007a) found greater use of Booleans, but Aula (2005) and Hsieh-Yee, (1993) found fewer Boolean queries being used by experts. This has been seen as evidence either that expert searchers can construct more complex queries, or that they are able to select exactly the right term to gain useful results.…”

Section: Studies Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 98%

“…Not surprisingly, these have found that experts have much more complex information seeking strategies. They will persist for longer with searches, use more varied strategies and more diverse sources, use both browsing and searching, and reformulate queries if an initial search does not produce useful results (Holscher & Strube, 2000;Hsieh-Yee, 1993;Aula et al 2005;Cothey, 2002). Good knowledge of the subject domain is also vital (Vakkari, 2002;Kuhlthau, 2004).…”

Section: Studies Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

“…When comparing a group who had expertise in information seeking with another group they call "double experts", i.e. experts in information seeking and the subject domain of the search, Holscher and Strube (2000) found that domain knowledge helps participants to select query terms that are more likely to produce a result set of useful size and quality. Expert searchers also use more synonyms (Hsieh-Yee, 1993;Vakkari, 2001); however, there is no consensus about their use of complex search expressions involving truncations, Boolean operators and phrase searching.…”

Section: Studies Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

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Cognitive economy and satisficing in information seeking: A longitudinal study of undergraduate information behavior

Warwick

Rimmer

Blandford

et al. 2009

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractThis paper reports on a longitudinal study of information seeking by undergraduate Information Management students. It describes how they found and used information, and explores their motivation and decision making. We employed a use-in-context approach where students were observed conducting, and interviewed about, information seeking tasks carried out during their academic work.We found that participants were reluctant to engage with a complex range of information sources, preferring to use the internet. The main driver for progress in information seeking was the immediate demands of their work (e.g. assignments). Students used their growing expertise to justify a conservative information strategy, retaining established strategies as far as possible and completing tasks with minimum information seeking effort. The time cost of using library material limited the uptake of such resources. New methods for discovering and selecting information were only adopted when immediately relevant to the task at hand, and tasks are generally chosen or interpreted in ways that minimised the need to develop new strategies. Students were driven by the demands of the task to use different types of information resources, but remained reluctant to move beyond keyword searches, even when they proved ineffective. They also lacked confidence in evaluating the relative usefulness of resources.Whereas existing literature on satisficing has focused on stopping conditions, this work has highlighted a richer 2 repertoire of satisficing behaviours.

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Section: Studies Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Studies Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Studies Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Cognitive economy and satisficing in information seeking: A longitudinal study of undergraduate information behavior

Warwick

Rimmer

Blandford

et al. 2009

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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“…Lucas and T opi (2002), Holscher and Strube (2000) and Lazonder et al (2000) compared expert and novice searchers in order to identify the types of knowledge and knowledge structures required. Kim and Allen (2002) report on the differences in users' cognition and search tasks, while Palmquist and Kim (2000) investigated cognitive style and experience as predictors of web search performance.…”

Section: Sajnl Libs and Info Sci 2003 69(2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Suggestions for a research framework for South Africa: how can we learn from web information seeking/searching studies?

Fourie¹

2013

South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science

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The growing interest in web informotion seeking/seorching studies, ond their importance for web site design. search engines, intranets, portals, etc. warrants Keywords: web information seeking; web information searching; web studies; research framework; research agenda IntroductionThe exponential growth in web sites, web users and accessto web-based information resources is an indication of their growing importance. The World Wide Web .0NWW) is used by a diverse group comprising scientists, researchers, academics, students, information technology (IT) specialists, members of the general public, schoolchildren and elderly citizens. A growing interest is reported for the last three groups (Bilal, 2000, 200 I; Burwell, 200 I) and in information seeking for everyday needs (Carey et 0/., 200 I) and decision=making (Choo, 200 I, 2002). In South Africa there is also a growing interest in the web as an information source. Apart from its potential to meet academic and businessinformation needs, it can also be an important resource filling the everyday information needs of South Africans. Spink and Cole (200 I :303) note that:[The] Internet is the driving force behind broadening LIS analysis of information seeking beyond work and school. The interactive potential of this hybrid information flow channel should bring the power of information use to many more sectors of society than is now the case, but it also forces researchers interested in these issues to take a wider, more integrative approach to studying information seeking and use that includes nonseeking behavior in its human information behavior perspective.Web information seeking/searchingstudies can shed light on the design of user interfaces, search engines, navigational features, online help and intelligent agents, information architecture, content description and metadata, the teaching of information skills (e.g. to schoolchildren or senior citizens) and the refinement of our information retrieval (IR) research methodology. The findings may also be useful in web advertising, marketing and e-commerce (Ozmutlu et 0/.,2002), and in drawing interest from designatedtarget groups (e.g. getting teenagers interested in usingthe library). By understanding the variables (also called barriers or influencing factors) that affect web information seeking/searchingwe can improve all facets of web information spaces. Many such variables have been identified and tested in traditional IR (Wilson I 999b).More recently Hertzum et aJ. (2002), for example, reports on the notion of trust in the information seeking behaviour of software engineers with special reference to virtual agents and e-commerce. Spink and Xu (2000) conclude that 'continued research into Web user behaviour is needed to impact the development of new types of user interfaces and software agents to aid users in better Web searching'.Information seeking is also important in the context of virtual or online learning environments (e.g. Sheremetov & Arenas, 2002; Yang, 200 I). In the South African context this is part...

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“…Often, the user actually learns appropriate query vocabulary while surfing. Be-cause searching by query allows users to quickly identify pages containing specific information, it is the most popular way that users begin seeking information [35,74], making the relevance of this paradigm paramount. For this reason, sophisticated search techniques are required, enabling search engines to operate more accurately for the specific user, abandoning the "one-size-fits-all" method.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personalized Search on the World Wide Web

Micarelli

Gasparetti

Sciarrone

et al.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

144

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Abstract.With the exponential growth of the available information on the World Wide Web, a traditional search engine, even if based on sophisticated document indexing algorithms, has difficulty meeting efficiency and effectiveness performance demanded by users searching for relevant information. Users surfing the Web in search of resources to satisfy their information needs have less and less time and patience to formulate queries, wait for the results and sift through them. Consequently, it is vital in many applications -for example in an e-commerce Web site or in a scientific one -for the search system to find the right information very quickly. Personalized Web environments that build models of short-term and long-term user needs based on user actions, browsed documents or past queries are playing an increasingly crucial role: they form a winning combination, able to satisfy the user better than unpersonalized search engines based on traditional Information Retrieval (IR) techniques. Several important user personalization approaches and techniques developed for the Web search domain are illustrated in this chapter, along with examples of real systems currently being used on the Internet. IntroductionRecently, several search tools for the Web have been developed to tackle the information overload problem, that is, the over-abundance of resources that prevent the user from retrieving information solely by navigating through the hypertextual space. Some make use of effective personalization, adapting the results according to each user's information needs. This contrasts with traditional search engines that return the same result list for the same query, regardless of who submitted the query, in spite of the fact that different users usually have different needs. In order to incorporate personalization into full-scale Web search tools, we must study the behavior of the users as they interact with information sources.

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Web search behavior of Internet experts and newbies

Cited by 442 publications

References 10 publications

Cognitive economy and satisficing in information seeking: A longitudinal study of undergraduate information behavior

Cognitive economy and satisficing in information seeking: A longitudinal study of undergraduate information behavior

Suggestions for a research framework for South Africa: how can we learn from web information seeking/searching studies?

Personalized Search on the World Wide Web

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