Abstract The Open Video Digital Library (OVDL) provides digital video files to the education and research community and is distinguished by an innovative user interface that offers multiple kinds of visual surrogates to people searching for video content. The OVDL is used by several thousand people around the world each month and part of this success is due to its user interface. This article examines the interplay between research and practice in the development of this particular digital library with an eye toward lessons for all digital libraries. We argue that theoretical and research goals blur into practical goals and practical goals raise new research questions as research and development progress—this process is akin to walking along a Möbius strip in which a locally two‐sided surface is actually part of a globally one‐sided world. We consider the gulf between the theories that guide current digital library research and current practice in operational digital libraries, provide a developmental history of the OVDL and the research frameworks that drove its development, illustrate how user studies informed its implementation and revision, and conclude with reflections and recommendations on the interplay between research and practice.

Abstract An evidence‐based practice approach to search interface design is proposed, with the goal of designing interfaces that adequately support search strategy formulation and reformulation. Relevant findings from studies of information professionals' searching behaviors, end users' searching of bibliographic databases, and search behaviors on the Web are highlighted. Three brief examples are presented to illustrate the ways in which findings from such studies can be used to make decisions about the design of search interfaces. If academic research can be effectively connected with design practice, we can discover which design practices truly are “best practices” and incorporate them into future search interfaces.

Three video search systems were compared in the interactive search task at the TRECVID 2003 workshop: a text-only system, which searched video shots through transcripts; a features-only system, which searched video shots through 16 video content features (e.g., airplanes and people); and a combined system, which searched through both transcripts and content features. 36 participants each completed 12 video search tasks. The hypothesis that the combined system would perform better than both the text-only and the features-only systems was not supported, and large topic effects were found. Further analysis showed that concept-based video retrieval worked best for specific topics, whereas the hybrid retrieval techniques which combine both concept- and content-based video retrieval showed some advantage when searching for generic topics. The results have implications for topic/task analysis for video retrieval research, and also for the implementation of hybrid video retrieval systems.

Abstract A search tactic is a set of search moves that are temporally and semantically related. The current study examined the tactics of medical students searching a factual database in microbiology. The students answered problems and searched the database on three occasions over a 9‐month period. Their search moves were analyzed in terms of the changes in search terms used from one cycle to the next, using two different analysis methods. Common patterns were found in the students' search tactics; the most common approach was the specification of a concept, followed by the addition of one or more concepts, gradually narrowing the retrieved set before it was displayed. It was also found that the search tactics changed over time as the students' domain knowledge changed. These results have important implications for designers in developing systems that will support users' preferred ways of formulating searches. In addition, the research methods used (the coding scheme and the two data analysis methods—zero‐order state transition matrices and maximal repeating patterns [MRP] analysis) are discussed in terms of their validity in future studies of search tactics.

In order to determine whether medical students can recognize when an information need has been fulfilled and when it has not, this study examined the quality of medical students' confidence estimates in answering short-answer questions dealing with bacteriology, based upon their personal knowledge alone and what they were able to retrieve from a factual database in microbiology. Twelve students, assessed over three occasions, remained in the final sample. The results indicate that students displayed a positive relationship between their expertise in answering the questions and the amount of overconfidence they indicated (the opposite of the hard–easy effect) for the personal knowledge task using a partial credit format. For the database-assisted task using the partial credit format, students showed less overconfidence in their answers with greater expertise in using the database. For both the personal knowledge and database-assisted tasks using a binary format (all or nothing correct), the students displayed the opposite of the hard–easy effect. We conclude that the patterns of confidence estimates (in the form of Brier scores), and thus students' ability to recognize whether their information need has been fulfilled, differ with varying degrees of expertise in both the personal knowledge responses and the database-assisted responses for both the partial credit and binary formats. Taking into consideration the fact that when subjects, in this case future medical practitioners, are extremely overconfident, they stop looking for information long before they have found material that is relevant, the results have broad implications for medical practice and information seeking.

This study compared of two modes of access to a biomedical database, in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency in supporting clinical problem solving and in terms of user preferences. Boolean access, which allowed subjects to frame their queries as combinations of keywords, was compared to hypertext access, which allowed subjects to navigate from one database node to another. The accessible biomedical data were identical across system versions. Performance data were collected from two cohorts of first-year medical students, each student randomly assigned to either the Boolean or the hypertext system. Additional attitudinal data were collected from the second cohort. At each of two research sessions (one just before and one just after their bacteriology course), subjects worked eight clinical case problems, first using only their personal knowledge and, subsequently, with aid from the database. Database retrievals enabled students to answer questions they could not answer based on personal knowledge alone. This effect was greater when personal knowledge of bacteriology was lower. There were not statistically significant differences between the two forms of access, in terms of problem-solving effectiveness or efficiency. Students preferred Boolean access over hypertext access.

The relationship between personal knowledge in a domain and searching proficiency in that domain, and the relationship between searching proficiency and database-assisted problem-solving performance were the foci of this study. On four assessment occasions over a 2-year period, 36 medical students solved problems in three biomedical domains (bacteriology, pharmacology, and toxicology) with and without assistance from a factual database in the relevant domain. There was little evidence of any relationship between personal domain knowledge and searching proficiency (i.e., search results, selection of search terms, improvement in selection of search terms over the course of the search, and efficiency). Search results, selection of search terms, and efficiency were found to be related to database-assisted problem-solving performance. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the degree to which information retrieved from a biomedical database can augment personal knowledge in addressing novel problems, and how the ability to retrieve information evolves over time. DESIGN: This longitudinal study comprised three assessments of two cohorts of medical students. The first assessment occurred just before student course experience in bacteriology, the second occurred just after the course, and the third occurred five months later. At each assessment, the students were initially given a set of bacteriology problems to solve using their personal knowledge only. Each student was then reassigned a sample of problems he or she had answered incorrectly, to work again with assistance from a database containing information about bacteria and bacteriologic concepts. The initial pass through the problems generated a "personal knowledge" score; the second pass generated a "database-assisted" score for each student at each assessment. RESULTS: Over two cohorts, students' personal knowledge scores were very low (approximately 12%) at the first assessment. They rose substantially at the second assessment (approximately 48%) but decreased six months later (approximately 25%). By contrast, database-assisted scores rose linearly: from approximately 44% at the first assessment to approximately 57% at the second assessment, to approximately 75% at the third assessment. CONCLUSION: The persistent increase in database-assisted scores, even when personal knowledge had attenuated, was the most remarkable finding of this study. While some of the increase may be attributed to artifacts of the design, the pattern seems to result from the retained ability to recognize problem-relevant information in a database even when it cannot be recalled.

A qualitative study of end-user computing applications in five departments in three organizations was undertaken. The study was designed to develop an empirically grounded model of the adoption process for intellectual technologies—technologies that are inherently flexible, enabling the user to take on the role of developer. Detailed analysis of 43 user-developed computing applications resulted in a model consisting of five stages: Resource Acquisition, Application Development, Adoption/Renewal, Routinization/Enhancement, and External Adoption. By comparing this model with two prior models of the adoption process, aspects of the adoption process requiring futher research were identified. © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.