Title
Conceptualizing institutional repositories: using co-discovery to uncover mental models.
Abstract
This study investigates how people construct mental models of new information systems with which they have limited experience. Six different institutional repositories were used as the experimental systems for this lab-based co-discovery experimental study. Sixty subjects (30 pairs) were asked to complete search tasks based on a simulated work situations using an institutional repository. Subsequently, subjects were instructed to visually depict how they thought the institutional repository worked and then explain this to their partner. Our findings are based on these drawings, descriptors written on drawings, and audio-recordings of explanations and conversations. The results reveal that most of the subjects constructed mental models focusing on system operations and the design of the user interface. Few highlighted the interactivity between the system and the end user or presented a global-view of the system to show how it related to other search engines or databases. We found that the co-discovery method provides a viable research design to elicit people's mental model construction. The implications of the results for interactive information retrieval community and institutional repository community are discussed in terms of research design, search behavior, and user instruction.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1145/1840784.1840809
IIiX
Keywords
Field
DocType
mental model construction,institutional repository community,different institutional repository,new information system,experimental system,co-discovery method,institutional repository,research design,end user,mental model,institutional repositories,mental model of an information retrieval system,search behavior,search engine,information retrieval system,information system,user interface
Information system,Research design,Institutional repository,Data mining,Interactivity,Cognitive models of information retrieval,Mental model,End user,Computer science,Human–computer interaction,World Wide Web,Information retrieval,User interface
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
11
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Soo Young Rieh183161.46
Ji Yeon Yang2703.31
Elizabeth Yakel310.35
Karen Markey4797.76