A user-centred approach to the evaluation of Subject Based Information Gateways: case study SOSIG

There has been a massive increase in the amount of information available to people as a result of the Internet and information seekers are expected to be in the position to identify and evaluate this information according to their needs. As a response to this, Subject Based Information Gateways have been introduced providing people with an organised collection of digital i nformation. An evaluation of the Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG) , conducted by an online questionnaire, examines such issues as who the SOS IG users are, how frequently they use the service and what their reasons fo r using the service are.