[Siguse-l] interesting report on MetaLib & Google Scholar

[Stephanie Willen Brown]

Dutch librarian Wouter Gerritsma posted about a Swedish usability
research project comparing students' search behaviour for information
with Google Scholar and Metalib conclude on his blog
(http://wowter.net/2007/11/14/students-expectation-of-databases/ ).  The
156-page report is available at
http://www.diva-portal.org/diva/getDocument?urn_nbn_se_su_diva-1264-2__f
ulltext.pdf and covers some interesting aspects of MetaLib usability, as
well as comparisons to functionality to Google Scholar.  They did 4 sets
of studies:  2 each for MetaLib &Google Scholar, and for each database
interface, they had a group of students who had had no prior training
and a group who had had a 45-minute introduction to the interface.

I don't know what their MetaLib interface looks like, so it's not clear
that their results translate to other MetaLib instances, but it's very
interesting to see the problems / successes Swedish students had with
both interfaces.

stephanie
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  Stephanie Willen Brown
  Electronic Resources Librarian / UConn
  860.486.4855
  IM CogSciLibrarian & on Facebook