Blog on the Side

Information Behavior on the Web (Audio) - Sanda Erdelez interviews Brian Detlors on January 31, 2006 as part of the HIB Spot Series from LiS Webcasts. Brian and his co-investigator examined more than 100 ARL web sites. He found that library web sites lag far behind corporate web portals and Internet sites like Amazon that offer wonderful robust information seeking environments. Academic libraries need to act now and improve their sites to better meet the needs of users before competitors develop products for scholars bypassing the library.

Forthcoming article in Journal of Academic Librarianship: "Academic Library Web Sites: Current Practice and Future Directions" by Brian Detlor and Vivian Lewis.

In another research study conducted with Maureen E. Hupfer, he investigated the relationship between gender and information seeking behaviours on the web. They developed a scale that looked at the degree that people are "agentic (self)" vs. "communal (other)" oriented. These characteristics had predictive value in relation to how you approach searching online. 'Self oriented' individuals do not want to see sites that have a lot of relationship oriented applications. They want to get in and out. "Community" oriented people want to see relationship oriented applications like email and chat, media clips, and richer visuals. Their findings suggest that web sites should be developed to suit these personality constructs.