Information seeking behaviour of scholars using resource discovery systems

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise how academics seek information relevant to their work or study in an academic library context. To accomplish our goals, we involved several stakeholders to better elicit their information seeking behavioural patterns. In this paper we perform a user test which allows us to establish customised information seeking models, which conceptualise the behavioural activity patterns of academic scholars from the information need stage until the termination of the search activity. We also propose suitable user requirements using personas as contextual settings, which might be helpful for informing the design and development of such systems.