Uses Kano's Model of Quality to develop a conceptual framework regarding the quality expectations and needs of Website users and reports on empirical investigations of features in the Web environment that satisfy basic, performance, and excitement needs of customers. Suggests implications for research and Website design. (Contains 12 references.)…

Explores business-related sites on the Russian Web and estimates usability for the Western user by focusing on the following: type of businesses; language on sites; communication capability; and response time of site servers. Findings suggest the Russian Web is more usable in terms of language and communication capability than ordering capability…

Examines the implications of incorporating user-centered design within information systems design practices. Highlights include a definition of user-centered design based on human-computer interface; questions asked about users, including outcome, process, and task variables; and three criteria for when to use this approach in information systems…

Discussion of information system design proposes the artifact as theory perspective and suggests that information system design is best tackled by user-centered theories and methods. Topics include the software development process, human-computer interaction, and implications for information science. (LRW)

Outlines the classical digital library model, which is derived from traditional practices of library and information science professionals, as an alternative to the database retrieval model. Reports preliminary results from an evaluation study of library and information professionals and endusers involved with primary care medicine. (AEF)

Presents a summary of results from a study which developed a taxonomy for studying value-in-use of library and information services in corporations; 218 users from 10 corporations were interviewed after using a service from the special library. Provides suggestions for application of the taxonomy. (Author/AEF)

Describes a model of information seeking/retrieval in which the user's quest is seen as a generalized abstract "response function" representing the user's response to the information delivered by the system. The concept of an information quest, "Q," is illustrated with data collected in the Ant World Project at Rutgers…

Discussion of cultural barriers in information systems focuses on results of a study at a large private research organization in Austria that was conducted to identify major problem areas and to develop a framework for identifying and evaluating possible solutions. User, technical, and cost factors for evaluating options are considered. (30…

Addresses foundations of designing a bibliographic database for casual end-users, including the representation of knowledge, hierarchical schemata, cognitive processing of search problems, basic level categories of knowledge, and Boolean strategy in online searching. A hierarchical-based query model, data-item model, and idealized data model for…

Uses a reliability framework to examine the role that relevance judgments play in quantitative information retrieval (IR) performance measurement with an eye toward issues introduced by Internet IR. Argues that a theoretical basis for reliable measurement is possible if the relevance yardstick is reconsidered in light of recent research and if the…

Examines use of the World Wide Web on public-access computers at the American University Library (Washington, D.C.) to identify the most frequently accessed Web sites, the frequency with which library-owned Web resources were accessed, and Web-usage patterns in the library in relation to the time of day and day of the week. (Author/AEF)

Examines the information use environment--information needs and behaviors--of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). Discusses a method for more effectively disseminating information throughout the campus, as well as implications for the development of information seeking models and a model of the NPS information environment. (AEF)

Rosetta, an indexing and retrieval system indexes papers in a collection based on the way they have been described when referenced by other papers in the collection. Using Rosetta, simple natural language queries retrieve high-precision results in which descriptions based on citations clearly summarize retrieved papers, allowing users to quickly…

Findings from three separate studies of relevance judgments by 44 initial online search users were examined. Results show that, for users conducting their initial search on a particular information problem, the number of items judged "partially" relevant, not item judged "highly" relevant, were positively correlated with important changes in…

Proposes a cognitive approach to modeling users' perceptions in situations in which information content, information sources, and users themselves are constantly moving in time and space. A temporal-spatial model is explained and empirical support is provided by the results of a study of weather information users from a variety of occupations.…