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A library or just another information resource? A case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries

Makri, S.; Blandford, A.; Gow, J.; Rimmer, J.; Warwick, C.; Buchanan, G.

A library or just another information resource? A case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries Thumbnail


Authors

S. Makri

A. Blandford

J. Gow

J. Rimmer

G. Buchanan



Abstract

A user's understanding of the libraries they work in, and hence of what they can do in those libraries, is encapsulated in their “mental models” of those libraries. In this article, we present a focused case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries based on observations and interviews with eight participants. It was found that a poor understanding of access restrictions led to risk-averse behavior, whereas a poor understanding of search algorithms and relevance ranking resulted in trial-and-error behavior. This highlights the importance of rich feedback in helping users to construct useful mental models. Although the use of concrete analogies for digital libraries was not widespread, participants used their knowledge of Internet search engines to infer how searching might work in digital libraries. Indeed, most participants did not clearly distinguish between different kinds of digital resource, viewing the electronic library catalogue, abstracting services, digital libraries, and Internet search engines as variants on a theme.

Citation

Makri, S., Blandford, A., Gow, J., Rimmer, J., Warwick, C., & Buchanan, G. (2007). A library or just another information resource? A case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 58(3), 433-445. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20510

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Feb 1, 2007
Deposit Date Sep 5, 2014
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Print ISSN 2330-1635
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 58
Issue 3
Pages 433-445
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20510
Related Public URLs http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/5097/

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Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Makri, S., Blandford, A., Gow, J., Rimmer, J., Warwick, C. and Buchanan, G. (2007), A library or just another information resource? A case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58 (3): 433-445, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.20510. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.




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