This chapter reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on the concept of credibility and its areas of application relevant to information science and technology, encompassing several disciplinary approaches.

This is a preprint of an article published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55, pp. 743-753. Abstract: The objective of this study was to characterize the home as an information use environment and to identify a range of information seeking and Web search behaviors at home. The data were analyzed on four levels: home environment, information seeking goals, information retrieval interaction, and search query. Findings indicated that the home, indeed, provided a distinct information use environment beyond physical setting alone in which the subjects used the Web for diverse purposes and interests.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / Research was focused on discovering whether two of the algorithms the research group has developed can help improve browsing and/or searching the Internet. Results indicate that a Kohonen self-organizing map (SOM)-based algorithm can successfully categorize a large and eclectic Internet information space into managable sub-spaces that users can successfully navigate to locate a homepage of interest to them.

The Securities Industry Development Centre (SIDC) is the education and training arm of the Securities Commission (SC), and the SIDC Library serves both SC staff and the securities industry. The SIDC Library is a specialised library that has its resources focused on the capital market. Identifying usersâ information needs is a first step towards analysing the information needs of SIDC Library members and the SC staff. The study was motivated by the fact that an analysis of information needs help identify the SIDC Library resources for further development to ensure the delivery of information services matches usersâ needs. In this paper, we would like to share a study that was conducted to analyse how the SIDC Library services were tailored to meet the information needs of users. By studying this aspect, we will be able to see how the library defines and classifies its user types, and addresses issues impacting information services through proper operation planning and practices. The respondents for this paper were mainly SIDC Library members and SC staff. The result of the study is based on a collection of survey questionnaires, personal interviews and records of user requests for documents. From this study, a profile of user information needs was established; enabling the library management to identify, support and provide an efficient delivery mechanism for meeting usersâ information needs. This study helped SIDC librarians identify the kind of information that was needed and generated, and to support those which are not readily available by further developing a comprehensive new subject/collection of SIDC Library information resources. This will also provide an insight into the users' expectations on content resources and services of the SIDC Library, as well as for developing library user education programmes. Thus, the study of usersâ information needs is one tool that enables SIDC Librarians to discover, evaluate, implement, maintain and improve its management of information resources.

The dissertation, "Characterizing World Wide Web Ecologies" was one of the first dissertations dedicated towards empirically understanding the dynamics of the Web and devising smarter algorithms to tame the content, structure, and usage of the Web.

The number of students studying away from their home countries is increasing. These students face various challenges when studying abroad, including meeting their information needs. This study investigated the information needs of international students at the University of Malaya. A questionnaire was designed and distributed to 70 students, of whom 54 (77.1%) responded. It was found the main information needs were related to the university, the faculty, and their programs of study. The students used the library in attempting to meet their information needs, although the frequency of library usage was generally low. The main barriers in seeking information were language related, and unfamiliarity with the library or-ganization and mission. Language proficiency appeared to be a barrier in being able to meet the information needs. Although the majority of the students considered themselves to be computer and Internet literate, but that did not have a relationship on the problems they faced in meeting the information needs.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / We describe an attempt to overcome information overload through information visualization â in a particular domain, group memory. A brief review of information visualization is followed by a brief description of our methodology. We . discuss our system, which uses multidimensional scaling MDS to visualize relationships between documents, and which . we tested on 60 subjects, mostly students. We found three important and statistically significant differences between task performance on an MDS-generated display and on a randomly generated display. With some qualifications, we conclude that MDS speeds up and improves the quality of manual classification of documents and that the MDS display agrees with subject perceptions of which documents are similar and should be displayed together.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / With the growth of hypertext and multimedia applications that support and encourage browsing it is time to take a penetrating look at browsing behavior. Several dimensions of browsing are examined, to find out: first, what is browsing and what cognitive processes are associated with it; second, is there a browsing strategy, and if so, are there any differences between how subject-area experts and novices browse; and finally, how can this knowledge be applied to improve the design of hypertext systems. Two groups of students, subject-area experts and novices, were studied while browsing a Macintosh H y p e r c a r d application on the subject of The Vietnam War. A protocol analysis technique was used to gather and analyze data. Components of the GOMS model were used to describe the goals, operators, methods, and selection rules observed. Three browsing strategies were identified: 1) search-oriented browse, scanning and reviewing information relevant to a fixed task, 2) reviewbrowse, scanning and reviewing interesting information in the presence of transient browse goals that represent changing tasks, and 3) scan-browse, scanning for interesting information (without review). Most subjects primarily used review-browse interspersed with search-oriented browse. Within this strategy, comparisons between subject-area experts and novices revealed differences in tactics: experts browsed in more depth, seldom used referential links, selected different kinds of topics, and viewed information differently than did novices. Based on these findings, suggestions are made to hypertext developers.

This study investigates how usersâ cognitive and affective characteristics influence the navigational and search behaviors on the Web among experienced Web users. Sixty-seven undergraduate students participated in the study. Two standardized tests and a questionnaire were used to collect information on the participantsâ cognitive style, problem-solving style, and demographics. Factor analysis was performed on the scores from the two standardized tests (Group Embedded Figures Test and Problem Solving Inventory), and extracted two user factors (Focus Control and Emotion Control). The Focus Control factor seemed to influence usersâ navigational behaviors, such as the use of links and back buttons, whereas the Emotion Control factor affected search behaviors including keyword searching, and also search performance measured by precision and recall.

Traditional information-processing accounts of the reasoning process in radiology assume that humans process the details of the input image in order to compute judgments. In these accounts, the development of expertise involves the acquisition of increasingly precise and complex internal problem representations that are based on a normal anatomy prototype. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that accurate judgments rely on the reasoners ability to ignore irrelevant detail, to retrieve relevant gist memories and to accurately instantiate the image information with respect to the internal representation. Fuzzy-trace theory predicts that the development of expertise involves the ability to access and process less precise and complex internal representations (i.e., gist). The purpose of this study was to examine the internal representations used to make judgments in radiology and to quantify the changes in complexity of the internal representations, as well as the differences in time, accuracy and confidence that might be associated with experience. Thirty-five subjects from general and specialized expertise samples participated. Each subject was presented with 32 chest films including normal films, films with precise disease patterns (mass category) and diffuse disease patterns (interstitial and airspace category) . For each film, the participant made a series of judgments (normal/abnormal; category; specific diagnosis) and then sketched the features that were essential to the judgments.