Views on end-user searching

Searching the intelligent gateway EasyNet — the end‐user's point of view

“…The question of whether the end-user really wants to be reached -or if there are users for these systems -will not be addressed here. Others have done this elsewhere including Ojala [4] who argues that "end-user searching will increase. The advance in expert systems, gateway arrangements, and new databases make this inevitable.…”

“…Front ends can ease the occasional searching on unfamiliar systems. Ojala [4] notes that "a librarian who uses a file only once every six months, is a casual searcher of that file, even though the same librarian may be an expert professional searcher of other files." EasyNet still needs a lot of work on its user interface, and Telebase Systems will be spending the next year or two speeding up its system and making it 'flawless' [6].…”

The end-user and the art librarian

“…Marydee Ojala, in her article, "Views on End-User Searching", defined the end-user as "a person accessing online databases and performing search operations for the purpose of finding information to be used by that same person, rather than another; end-user searching is done to answer questions posed by the searcher, in contrast with the intermediary searcher", a role that heretofore has been primarily held by librarians. 1 When automated bibliographic searching began, librarians rightfully interposed themselves between the users and the terminals. Librarians, professionals who study the way information is packaged and disseminated, learned the languages, protocols and structures of the databases that were available.…”

Building a large thesaurus for information retrieval

“…Like others, though, we are convinced that easy-to-apply automatic methods can help solve this problem (see argument in Salton 1986). Indeed, automatic approaches seem essential since many end-users want to search without involving trained intermediaries (Ojala 1986). However, since the fundamental issue is one of mismatch between language use of document authors and inquirers, leading to uncertainties regarding whether a particular item should be retrieved (Chen and Dhar 1987), we are also convinced that computational linguistics is essential for a complete solution.…”