Submitted by Sonia Burnier (sdesouza@ibict.br) on 2012-07-19T16:46:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 SilviaBarcellosSouthwick2001.pdf: 1110117 bytes, checksum: f1fca9461f81bd17fca8c3e1966570aa (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-07-19T16:46:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 SilviaBarcellosSouthwick2001.pdf: 1110117 bytes, checksum: f1fca9461f81bd17fca8c3e1966570aa (MD5) Previous issue date: 2001 / [en] The internet individual with the opportunity to access unprecdented amounsts of information on any given subject.However, there remain barriers to rerieving the best and most relevant documents.The present study focuses on processes of resolving user ( versus technical) issues.Informations system users have traditionally relied on expert intermediarias for resolving problems.Face-to-face encounters have been he traditional form of human-expert intermediation.Increasinly, however, information-provision services have begun to offer human-mediated information services through computer networks-especially the internet-recognizing the poencial advantages in overcoming barriers of time and space in user-intermeiary communications.Despite the likely increase in this trend future, there remains at this point an inadequate understanding of he effectiveness of these sysems.The present study investigaes intermediation in the context of an asyncronous text-based compuer-mediated medium, such as e-mail and web-orms.The goal of the research is in describing and gaining a further understanding of processes of intemediation.The main objectives are to identify the factors that are perceived as affecting digital intermediation and to investigate how and under what circumstances these factrs miht affect digital intermediation.The research takes the form of anexploratory case study of a hospital library infomation service.The overall approach is naturalistic.Grouunded theory provides a framework for data analysis.In order to elicit a rich and fully infomed accounting of the phenomenon under investigation, the researcher interpret s and relates the diverse human perpectives of the intermediaries, the users, and the researcher herself.This provides a basis for highlighting potentially conflicting, as well as corroborating, evidence.The study contributes at both the conceptual and practical leves to an overall understanding of digital intermediation by producing a descriptive framework of analysis.Nine cateories of factores potentially affecting digital intermediation are identified.These factores form three broad aspets of digital intermediation: media use, question negotiation and personal comminication preference.The researche also proposes directions for future research in the area of reference intermediation in a digital environment.