A PROFILE OF END-USER SEARCHING BEHAVIOR BY HUMANITIES SCHOLARS - THEGETTY ONLINE SEARCHING PROJECT REPORT NO 2

The Getty Art History Information Program carried out a two-year proje ct to study how advanced humanities scholars operate as end users of o nline databases. Visiting Scholars at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Santa Monica, California, were offered t he opportunity to do unlimited subsidized searching of DIALOG(R) datab ases. This second report from the project analyzes how much searching the scholars did, the kinds of search techniques and DIALOG features t hey used, and their learning curves. Search features studied included commands, Boolean logic, types of vocabulary, and proximity operators. Error rates were calculated, as well as how often the scholars used e lementary search formulations and introduced new search features and c apabilities into their searches. The amount of searching done ranged f rom none at all to dozens of hours. A typical search tended to be simp le, using one-word search terms and little or no Boolean logic. Starti ng with a full day of DIALOG training, the scholars began their search experience at a reasonably high level of competence; in general, they maintained a stable level of competence throughout the early hours of their search experience.