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Article Dans Une Revue Journal of Computer Assisted Learning Année : 2004

Searching for information in an online public
access catalogue (OPAC)

Jerome Dinet

Résumé

Boolean systems still constitute most of the installed base of online public access catalogues
(OPACs) in the French universities even if many studies have shown that Boolean operators
are not frequently used by ‘non-librarian' users (by contrast with professional librarians).
The first study examined the use of Boolean operators by French university students; In the
second study, elaborated to evaluate the impact of information search expertise on this use,
Boolean operators are explicitly presented and participants were explicitly invited to use
them. We assumed that university students would not frequently use the operators in
searching, and that even if they were explicitly invited to make use of them. Results obtained
with the first study based on transaction logs analyses confirmed that French university
students did not frequently use Boolean operators. The impact of information search expertise,
analysed in the second study, compared three levels of expertise: Novice (university
students), intermediate (future professional librarians), and expert (professional librarians).
Results showed that, even if the three groups were invited to use Boolean operators, this use
increased significantly with the level of information search expertise. University students, if
they manage procedural functions of connectives in natural language, do not always manage
the whole set of procedural functions carried by such connectives when used in the documentary
language. So, the relevance of presenting explicit Boolean operators in the OPACs
when users are ‘non-librarians' is questioned.
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Dates et versions

halshs-00009699 , version 1 (21-03-2006)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-00009699 , version 1

Citer

Jerome Dinet. Searching for information in an online public
access catalogue (OPAC): The impacts of information search expertise on the use of Boolean operators. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 2004, 20, pp.338-346. ⟨halshs-00009699⟩

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