Discussion of the information-seeking behavior of humanists focuses on a study that investigated the efficacy of following bibliographic references from documents already known. Topics include the nature of humanities research; vocabulary control and indexing; subject-based literature searches; seed documents; relevance; retrieval based on…

Describes research using students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that investigated the ways in which different levels of knowledge about a topic can affect search strategies in an online public access catalog. Previous research is reviewed, and implications for information intermediaries and designers of information retrieval…

Reports on a study of user-based relevance interpretations which considered the nature of users' thought processes in evaluating bibliographic citations produced by a document retrieval system. Factors found to be important include an individual's subject knowledge, professional training, educational background, anticipated usage of documents,…

Three studies examined public library reference services use by patrons in Anglo, Hispanic, and Vietnamese communities in California. Interview questions concerned search topics, use of staff help, perceived usefulness of search result, successful search strategies, reasons for not seeking help, foreknowledge of sources, reasons for using the…

Reports a study that analyzed natural language search statements constructed by 22 Getty Visiting Scholars as they researched humanities topics on DIALOG. Results show a greater use of names, geographical areas, chronological periods, and discipline terms than scientists use, with implications for the design of humanities online systems and…