VALA2010 Session 1 Joc

VALA20120The impact of discovery platforms on the information seeking behaviour of ESL undergraduate students

VALA 2010 CONCURRENT SESSION 1: Discovery
Tuesday 9 February 2010, 11:25 – 11:55
Persistent URL: http://www.vala.org.au/vala2010-proceedings/vala2010-session-1-joc

VALA Peer Reviewed PaperKaren Joc

Assistant Dean, Dubai Library, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
http://www.zu.ac.ae

Kayo Chang

Instructor & Reference/Instruction Librarian, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates
http://www.zu.ac.ae

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    VALA2010 Session 1 Joc Paper 68.93 KB
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    VALA2010 Session 1 Joc Presentation 2.41 MB

Abstract

Between September and December 2009, librarians at Zayed University undertook a three phase randomised, semi-blind usability study focusing on four discovery platforms, to ascertain which of these discovery platforms if any best met the criteria of these EFL digital natives. Three of the platforms were vendor based (AquaBrowser, Encore, Primo) and one of the platforms is open source (VuFind). In particular the investigators were concerned with the students’ browsing and searching experience; were students provided with appropriate search options/alternatives; did students experience any dead-end searches; the relevancy of resources retrieved for search terms entered; the possibility of Arabisation; and, most importantly, the overall users’ experience.