Formatted hardcopy vs electronic fulltext documents : a study in users' selection effectiveness

• Main Author: Yeoh, Tony Guan Chiew.
• Other Authors: Harvey, Ross
• Format: Theses and Dissertations
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Library and information science::Libraries::Information retrieval and analysis
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/20476
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This study tests the hypothesis that formatted hardcopy documents are more effective than on-screen electronic fulltext documents in aiding users to select relevant documents. An experiment was conducted on a class of 40 postgraduate students in the Information Studies programme. The subjects were divided into two groups. One group searched through a stack of 20 hardcopy press cuttings to retrieve documents relevant to an assigned research topic. The other group searched on-screen using Newslink, the corresponding electronic fulltext news database version of the same documents. On completion of this first set of retrieval exercises, the two groups were swapped and the exercises were repeated for another research topic. Results from the experiment were supplemented with and triangulated by a questionnaire survey administered to the subjects.