The benefits of displaying additional internal document information on textual database search result lists

Abstract

Most information systems, which perform computerized searches of textual databases, deal with the need to display a list of documents which fulfill the search criteria. The user must chose from a list of documents, those documents which are relevant to his search query. Selection of the relevant document is problematical, especially during searches of large databases which have a large number of documents fulfilling the search criteria. This article defines a new hierarchical tree which is made up of three levels of display of search results. In a series of previous studies (not yet published) which were carried out at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the influence of information (within the documents) displayed to the user was examined in the framework of a list of responses to questions regarding user satisfaction with the method and the quality of his choices. In the present study, in addition to the information displayed in the list, information on the contents (subject) of the document was also displayed. The study examined the influence of this additional information on search time, user satisfaction and ease of using the systems.