Background/Context: Parents are important consumers of educational information, especially with stipulations in ESSA. Yet, research on parental information needs is limited. It is important to understand how the information is displayed for parents in accessible and understandable ways. This study uses a theoretical perspective of parental…

The extensification activities of Education Informatics Network use in Turkey are in progress. The use and preferability of this education portal by teachers and students depend on various factors. One of these factors is usability. The purpose of this research is to make the usability analysis of the Education Informatics Network from the…

While the influence of presentation formats have been widely studied in Bayesian reasoning tasks, we present the first systematic investigation of how presentation formats influence information search decisions. Four experiments were conducted across different probabilistic environments, where subjects (N = 2,858) chose between 2 possible search…

The success of an application programming interface (API) crucially depends on how well its documentation meets the information needs of software developers. Previous research suggests that these information needs have not been sufficiently understood. This article presents the results of a series of semistructured interviews and a follow-up…

This paper reports on a guided navigation system built on the textbook search engine developed at Anadolu University to support distance education students. The search engine uses Turkish Language specific language processing modules to enable searches over course material presented in Open Education Faculty textbooks. We implemented a guided…

Discovery tools are the next phase of library search systems. Illinois State University's Milner Library implemented EBSCO Discovery Service in August 2010. The authors conducted usability studies on the system in the fall of 2010. The aims of the study were twofold: first, to determine how Milner users set about using the system in order to…

Proposes a composite feature measure which combines the shape and color features of an image based on a clustering technique. A similarity measure computes the degree of match between a given pair of images; this technique can be used for content-based image retrieval of images using shape and/or color. Tests the technique on two image databases;…

In systems that support query-based searching, the presence of multilingual content affects the search technology and user interface components that support query formulation, document selection, and query refinement. A categorization-based selection model is described that is based on rapidly constructed word-by-word gloss translations. An…

Uses a simple model of an information retrieval (IR) technology to examine performance measures for IR systems. Shows that, if a user is employing a system optimally, then reasonable performance measures will tend to be relatively robust, or insensitive, to small variations in assumptions about the user's behavior. (AEF)

The purpose of this exploratory study was to develop research methods to compare the effectiveness of two video browsing interface designs, or surrogates--one static (storyboard) and one dynamic (slide show)--on two distinct information seeking tasks (gist determination and object recognition). (AEF)

Presents a framework for modeling the content of information objects such as documents and video programs based on observation of how users interact with those objects in the course of information seeking and use. Identifies four categories of potentially observable user behaviors: examination, retention, reference, and annotation. (AEF)

As more information resources become accessible using computers, the digital interfaces to those resources need to be appropriate for all people. However, when it comes to digital libraries, the interfaces have typically been designed for older children or adults. The researchers have begun to develop a digital library interface that is…

Examines visual information needs as expressed in users' Web image queries; the data set consisted of 1,025,908 sequential queries from 211,058 users of EXCITE, a major Internet search service. Provides data on: image queries, image search sessions, and image terms. Discusses implications for the development of models for visual information…

This research begins to refine a cognitive model of interactive information seeking for use in the design of information retrieval (IR) systems. The research reported in this paper critically examines several interactive information seeking and retrieval models that have emerged over the last two decades. Building primarily on the stratified…

Three Web search engines--Alta Vista, Excite, and Lycos--were compared and evaluated in terms of their search capabilities and retrieval performances using sample queries drawn from real reference questions. Findings indicated Alta Vista outperformed Excite and Lycos in both search facilities and retrieval performance, although Lycos had the…