Library and Information Science Commons^™

Understanding Novice Users' Help-Seeking Behavior In Getting Started With Digital Libraries: Influence Of Learning Styles, Chunsheng Huang

Theses and Dissertations

Users' information needs have to be fulfilled by providing a well-designed system. However, end users usually encounter various problems when interacting with information retrieval (IR) systems and it is even more so for novice users. The most common problem reported from previous research is that novice users do not know how to get started even though most IR systems contain help mechanisms. There is a deep gap between the system's help function and the user's need. In order to fill the gap and provide a better interacting environment, it is necessary to have a clearer picture of the problem and …