The false focus in online searching - The particular case of undergraduates seeking information for course assignments in the humanities and social sciences

To avoid information overload, undergraduates seeking information for cours e assignments in the humanities and social sciences might skip the necessar y stages of topic definition and elaboration, as Kuhlthau describes in her six-stage Information Search Process (ISP). This tendency can be reinforced by information professionals who seek to facilitate the users' searching o f electronic databases with the suggestion that they limit their search so that the end result will be "manageable." This strategy can lead to a "fals e focus": a focus that is induced so that it comes too soon and is ultimate ly incompatible with the information need and interests of the user. We wil l examine the characteristics of false focus, and present a strategy that a llows the reference librarian to identify the undergraduate's information n eed and automatically attach the most appropriate electronic database searc h strategy for the satisfaction of that need. Thus, the construction of a s earch strategy becomes wholly dependent on the user's information need, not the constraints posed by the accessing technology and the idea that the ev entual output should be limited to thirty items or less.