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Digital library search preferences amongst historians and genealogists: British History Online user survey

Crymble, A; (2016) Digital library search preferences amongst historians and genealogists: British History Online user survey. Digital Humanities Quarterly , 10 (4) Green open access

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Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study of 1,439 users of British History Online (BHO). BHO is a digital library of key printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a principal focus on the period between 1300 and 1800. The collection currently contains 1,250 volumes, and 120,000 web pages of material. During a website rebuild in 2014, the project team asked its registered users about their preferences for searching and browsing the content in the collection. Respondents were asked about their current search and browsing behaviour, as well as their receptiveness to new navigation options, including fuzzy searching, proximity searching, limiting search to a subset of the collection, searching by publication metadata, and searching entities within the texts such as person names, place names, or footnotes. The study provides insight into the unique and often converging needs of the site’s academic and genealogical users, noting that the former tended to respond in favour of options that gave them greater control over the search process, whereas the latter generally opted for options to improve the efficacy of targeted keyword searching. Results and recommendations are offered.

Type: Article
Title: Digital library search preferences amongst historians and genealogists: British History Online user survey
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Publisher version: http://digitalhumanities.org:8081/dhq/vol/10/4/000...
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: digital humanities, digital history, digital archives, user experience, genealogy, academic research, interface design
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Information Studies
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10119407
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