A study of users' requirements in the development of palm leaf manuscripts metadata schema

Abstract

This paper presents the users' behavior, their needs and expectations with respect to palm leaf manuscripts (PLMs) which are ancient Thai documents.. We focus on access tools, access points and how users select PLMs. The data were collected by in-depth interviews of 20 users including researchers, local scholars and graduate students who are working on research in the field and using PLMs for information and knowledge resources. The research results present two important characteristics of user behaviors: previous knowledge of items, and exploratory searches. Users adopt a 4-step pattern in searching for the PLMs. Finally, we discuss the important information in searching for the PLMs and we compare this with the frequently consulted bibliographic elements and Dublin Core elements. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.