The thesis undertakes pioneering work in the study of Web production, representation and consumption through its focus on ethnic minorities. The comprehensive crosssection of Web content discussed shows significant ethnic minority activity despite the apparent white, Western, male and middle class profile of cyberspace. This empirical dimension of the research not only complements the large body of theoretical work that has been done about cyberspace, but also uses theoretical models from a range of academic disciplines (especially media studies) to anchor its analysis of the Web. The particularities of the Web are investigated empirically through the involvement of a group of ethnic minority women, including myself, who were the research subjects. This demanded methodological innovation given the comparatively minimal empirical work that has been done on the Web and subsequently, the lack of any conventional approaches to studying this new technology. The research was also made methodologically complex through the educational environment and larger pilot study of which it was part, and the resulting matrix of power relations arising from it. But it also takes full advantage of these circumstances, and is self-reflexive in doing so, thus creating a robust examination of the Web centred on the experiences of women from ethnic minorities. The research subjects' interactions with the Web are not only the basis for exploring Web consumption, but their findings are discussed as the interface between producers and consumers, the point of representation. This in-depth consideration of Web content explores depictions of ethnicity in terms of the traditional representational practices of other media and how these have been reinvented and adapted for the Web. The Web texts also suggest how ethnic minorities are negotiating and diversifying their own representation on the Web in response to the limits of older media industries. The thesis does not theorise the Web as a technology of infinite possibility, because its empirical grounding highlights the constraints as much as the strengths of the medium in comparison to other technologies of representation. The limitations of access, representation and even to studying the Web are examined in detail without recourse to simplistic conclusions or recommendations.

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Many people believe that good documentation is important, yet few use it regularly and effectively. An attempt is made to find reasons for this contradictory behaviour, by examining the existing practices of providers and users of documentation. Reasons for not using documentation appear to fall into two classes; predictable interaction effects and unpredictable interaction effects. Providers usually try to predict the problems users are likely to have at the user-documentation interface, by following standard quality control procedures. When these fail to produce good documentation, users become dissatisfied and turn elsewhere for their information needs. On the other hand, good quality documentation may not be used for reasons which cannot be predicted, and often cannot be explained. An approach which suggests methods for dealing with both of these situations is formulated, and ideas for raising the status of documentation are discussed.

The re-use of products such as code, specifications, design decisions and documentation has been proposed as a method for increasing software productivity and reliability. A major problem that has still to be adequately solved is the storage and retrieval of re-usable 'components'. Current methods, such as keyword retrieval and catalogues, rely on the use of names to describe components or categories. This is inadequate for all but a few well established components and categories; in the majority of cases names do not convey sufficient information on which to base a decision to retrieve. One approach to this problem is to describe components using a formal specification. However this is impractical for two reasons; firstly, the limitations of theorem proving would severely restrict the complexity of components that could be retrieved and secondly the retrieval mechanism would need to have a method of retrieving components with 'similar' specifications. This thesis proposes the use of formal 'property' models to represent the key functionality of components. Retrieval of components can then take place on the basis of a property model produced by the library's users. These models only describe the key properties of a component, thereby making the task of comparing properties feasible. Views are introduced as a method of relating similar, non identical property models, and the use of these views facilitates the re-use of components with similar properties. The language Miramod has been developed for the purpose of describing components, and a Miramod compiler and property prover which allow Miramod models to be compared for similarity, have been designed and implemented. These tools have indicated that model based component library retrieval is feasible at relatively low levels of the programming process, and future work is suggested to extend the method to encompass earlier stages in the development of large systems.

This thesis concerns the COMMIX system, which automatically extracts information on what a text is about, and generates that information in the highly compacted form of compound nominal expressions. The expressions generated are complex and may include novel terms which do not appear themselves in the input text. From the practical point of view, the work is driven by the need for better representations of content: for representations which are shorter and more concise than would appear in an abstract, yet more informative and representative of the actual aboutness than commonly occurs in indexing expressions and key terms. This additional layer of representation is referred to in this work as pertaining to the essence of a particular text. From a theoretical standpoint, the thesis shows how the compound nominal as a construct can be successfully employed in these highly informative representations. It involves an exploration of the claim that there is sufficient semantic information contained within the standard dictionary glosses for individual words to enable the construction of useful and highly representative novel compound nominal expressions, without recourse to standard syntactic and statistical methods. It shows how a shallow semantic approach to content identification which is based on lexical overlap can produce some very encouraging results. The methodology employed, and described herein, is domain-independent, and does not require the specification of templates with which the input text must comply. In these two respects, the methodology developed in this work avoids two of the most common problems associated with information extraction. As regards the evaluation of this type of work, the thesis introduces and utilises the notion of percentage attainment value, which is used in conjunction with subjects' opinions about the degree to which the aboutness terms succeed in indicating the subject matter of the texts for which they were generated.

The thesis draws upon an ethnographic and qualitative study of two related sites in the world of commercial bookselling. It provides a detailed account of the role of the book in the everyday lives of a group of readers and of the organisational practices and experience of work within a UK bookselling chain. This empirical account is entwined with a theoretical argument founded in non-representational theories of practice and subjectivity. This leads to a stance critical of dualistic conceptions of society and space and an attempt to describe and understand these sites as the outcome of material, human and discursive relations rather than as essentialised entities. The thesis explores the implications of this conceptualisation of these sites in terms of recent debates concerning commodity chains, the role of the object and materiality in constituting society and space and notions of subjectivity and identity and draws conclusions concerning the spatiality of these concepts.

The present study aimed to identify students' perceptions of issues arising from and factors influencing on-line group interaction and dynamics in computer conferencing in higher education by recording the perceptions of a group of students who acted as members of on- line groups. The emergent objectives were to develop recommendations and guidelines for the effective deployment of on-line group interaction and elements of a possible model. The research has taken an inductive interpretative approach applying qualitative methods. Interviews were the main tool of data collection and the grounded theory approach, as developed by Strauss and Corbin in 1990, adopted for the analysis of the interview data. The analysis was also assisted by the use of the Atlas. ti software, specially designed for analysis of qualitative data. Issues of validity of qualitative research, following Lincoln and Guba's (1985) proposed criteria of establishing "trustworthiness" such as credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability were addressed and discussed in connection to the current study. Findings of the study were placed around five main categories addressing ways group participants utilised in order to express themselves in the computer conferencing environment, issues of participation, decision-making procedures, conflicts and disagreements, and finally co-ordination issues. A number of factors affected the categories arose were identified. Relationships between the categories proposed and the code named lack of communication cues were also identified. Conclusions drawn from the study formulated guidelines and recommendations on computer conferencing issues and factors found to affect interaction among the group participants in the text-based on-line environment and proposed elements of a theory following the grounded theory procedures. Suggestions and points for further research along with implications for practice were also included.

This thesis reports a research work whose objective was to derive a grounded model of the user education domain, which was identified as pertaining to subject librarians' expertise, using a knowledge elicitation approach in the field of agricultural sciences. The knowledge elicitation framework adopted was that which sees knowledge acquisition as a process of modelling expertise, and the models derived as qualitative in nature. Accordingly, the main methodological approach involved was based on qualitative research and use of grounded theory methods. The research design was divided into three studies, all based on interview data. The research started by studying the role of subject librarians in academic libraries in the UK (Study One), which identified the area of user education for further study. Study Two proceeded to elicit information seeking practices and user education processes from academics and librarians. Finally, Study Three elicited information seeking practices of students who were engaged in library research. A model of the user education domain in the field of agricultural sciences in a Brazilian university was derived from the combination of the analysis of Study Two and Three. The model describes the library research process of individuals as happening in discipline specific contexts, influenced by the world at large. The process takes place through a series of information-seeking tasks and task-related strategies, which are employed to search external knowledge sources and satisfy an information need. During this interaction, internal knowledge sources are used and modified according to the tasks and strategies being carried out. If these internal knowledge sources are deficient for effective use of external knowledge sources, mediation strategies by an expert can help readjust the information-seeking process and alter the state of related internal knowledge sources The model proposed is used to derive recommendations for the design of user education programmes, subject librarians' work, and domain modelling using grounded theory.

This study outlines the derivation of a behavioural model intended to underpin thinking on questions concerning the design of information retrieval systems for academic social scientists. The historical background of information retrieval research is reviewed and the behavioural assumptions made in that research, characterised as the information retrieval model, are examined. Developments in the research tradition following from the early empirical tests on information retrieval systems are discussed, and problems experienced in the attempt to develop a coherent and practically useful research programme around the notion of relevance as a quantitative concept are analysed. A major alternative to work employing the information retrieval model has been the cognitive approach to information retrieval system design. In research so far undertaken in this approach the system has had to construct a cognitive model of the searcher's requirements in order for retrieval to take place. It is argued that the characteristics of social science information present particular difficulties for building such a model, and that the step of the system building a cognitive model of the searcher's requirements as a pre—requisite for retrieval is unnecessary. Instead, a behavioural approach to system design is recommended. The information seeking patterns of a variety of academic social scientists, derived from transcripts of interviews, were analysed and broken down into six characteristics, starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. These characteristics seemed sufficient to exhaust the different generic features of the various patterns, and to provide a flexible behavioural model to underpin thinking about information retrieval system design. The features of an exploratory retrieval system for social scientists based on the characteristics of their information seeking patterns are outlined, the extent to which such features are available in existing systems, and the requirements for implementing the model on an operational system are considered. The argument of the study is that the behavioural approach, and the analysis of information seeking patterns into their characteristics, represents a coherent and practically useful basis for the design of exploratory information retrieval systems for academic social scientists.

The economics and value of information have been analysed in this study. Efforts have been made to deepen our understanding of the value of information in information work. The literature of information science and economics were reviewed but suitable ready-to-use methods and techniques for the assessment of the value of information in the research work tasks were not found. A dual approach to the value of information was developed from the theoretical analyses and later tested in empirical studies: (1) The exchange value of information products, services, channels and systems should be studied using economic methods. (2) The value-in-use of information should be studied using the cognitive approach which takes the user, the use and the effects of use of information into consideration. The approach was used in the empirical studies in a research organization. A model was developed for optimizing the value of information for research work. The following 'management actions' are needed: (1) ensure that results of research are 'published'; (2) ensure that there is a rich information environment for research; (3) encourage joint efforts in information seeking and use; (4) ensure that information found is actually put to use; (5) improve the seeking of methodological information; and (6) ensure that the time used for information seeking and use is appropriate to the project. Data for the model have to be collected in respect of the present state of affairs under investigation concerning each of the above actions.