[Sigia-l] integrated catalogues?

[Karl Fast]

> It's out there. I know it's out there. You know it's out there.
> Google knows it's out there.


This is a widespread *belief* or perception about searching the Web.
There is some research about this, about how people search the web
and perceive Web searching (note: I've got a paper or two about this; 
what follows is mostly based on that research, but not entirely).

This research has found that when it comes to Web search engines,
people are:

   (a) confident that the information they need is "out there"

   (b) confident that they are capable of finding it

   (c) confident about all of this no matter how experienced they
       are at searching; even novice or unsophisticated searchers
       who don't know boolean from bananas are confident

That's for the Web. For searching Google & Yahoo and MSN and other
large-scale web search engines.

When it comes to more traditional and highly structured information
systems, the situation is completely different. Things like library
catalogues (OPACs) and journal databases and things like that. 

For these systems, people view those three points the other way
around. Briefly, people are

  (a) not confident that the information they need is in the system

  (b) not confident that they are capable of finding it, even if it
      is in the system  

  (c) not confident that they have sufficient skills or experience to
      make effective use of the system; they believe that finding
      things in these systems requires a lot of skill, they don't
      have that skill, but if they did then it would probably work
      pretty well..

As one person in my study said:

   I mean the Internet is made for all kinds of people. It's made
   for smart people and regular people and stupid people. So even
   stupid people can search for stuff on the Internet. And that's
   why I think...I think the Internet kind of dumbens down the
   process of searching so that anybody can use it.

I *love* that line: "even stupid people can search" the Internet.   

This research is about user's *perceptions* of searching, not what
is actually true (though I think they're not far wrong). Also, the
research covers a lot more than just this.

Most of the above comes from research I did and published at ASIS&T.
But other people have found similar things.

Hope that was helpful, or at least mildly interesting.



-- 
Karl Fast
http://www.livingskies.com/