Students' success with interactive information systems (11s) such as those found in many CD-ROM applications depends to large degree on their capacity accurately to choose and apply search strategies in response to information needs. 11s systems provide many ways to retrieve information, with some methods being more efficient and effective than others. The purpose of this study was to investigate the search strategies employed by novice users of an 11s system and to analyse the problems and issues that were impediments to successful use. A class of 12 year old students was instructed in the use of an electronic encyclopaedia. The students used the encyclopaedia as an information source for individual projects and on completion their information skills tested and analysed. The study found that students tended to employ inefficient search strategies and experienced difficulty in creating search requests for information related problems. IntroductionThe rapid development, application and uptake of interactive multimedia technologies appears to have vast implications for schools and school curricula. These technologies include the capability for the storage and retrieval of large amounts of information. They are rapidly becoming attributes of the configuration of most entry level desktop computer systems. There are now many specific applications of interactive multimedia for educational applications, the most common of which are electronic books. Richards, Barker, Giller, Lamont and Manji (1990) describe three discrete form of electronic book:

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BackgroundSemantically-enriched browsing has enhanced the browsing experience by providing contextualised dynamically generated Web content, and quicker access to searched-for information. However, adoption of Semantic Web technologies is limited and user perception from the non-IT domain sceptical. Furthermore, little attention has been given to evaluating semantic browsers with real users to demonstrate the enhancements and obtain valuable feedback. The Sealife project investigates semantic browsing and its application to the life science domain. Sealife's main objective is to develop the notion of context-based information integration by extending three existing Semantic Web browsers (SWBs) to link the existing Web to the eScience infrastructure.MethodsThis paper describes a user-centred evaluation framework that was developed to evaluate the Sealife SWBs that elicited feedback on users' perceptions on ease of use and information findability. Three sources of data: i) web server logs; ii) user questionnaires; and iii) semi-structured interviews were analysed and comparisons made between each browser and a control system.ResultsIt was found that the evaluation framework used successfully elicited users' perceptions of the three distinct SWBs. The results indicate that the browser with the most mature and polished interface was rated higher for usability, and semantic links were used by the users of all three browsers.ConclusionConfirmation or contradiction of our original hypotheses with relation to SWBs is detailed along with observations of implementation issues.

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