User Needs and Behaviour
Journey into user information need and information seeking behaviour
Welcome to the Web Site
This web site is part of course requirements for User Needs and Behaviour (WXGB6303). It changes the old method of having to submit assignments in print and by hand to the instructor.
The main content of this web site would be the assignments that we are required to finish at our own pace by semester end in April 2008. We are thus not bound by multiple deadlines. However, as mature students we are expected to show the progress of the web site and its contents from time to time during class meetings.
The assignments that we need to complete as course requirements were as follow: reflection and observation, classified annotated bibliography, research or presentation, project plan or proposal, this website, quizzes and final examination at the end of the semester.
As a student, I appreciate this idea as a brilliant way of doing and submitting our course requirements. There are several reasons to it:
- It saves the student from the hassle of printing and submitting by hand, due to the time constraint as part-time students who have to divide time between MLIS programme, career and family.
- The contents would be available online to be shared with wider audience.
- It provides opportunity to understand better the paperless society, technologies behind it, practicing web publishing techniques (as well as enhancing the skills), and many more on web technology side.
- It saves the planet by reducing the amount of paper that we have to use and also the printing cost.
Last but not least, I would like to extend my humble gratitude and appreciation to the instructor of this course who incorporated and encouraged the use of latest technology in her classroom and provides us with more time and space for self-study; but of course not without her patience, guidance and kind assistance.
Latest update on 8 March 2008
Explore newly uploaded special section, My User Studies Notebook that collects my thoughts and notes when doing online reading. Find time also to visit the added resources related to user needs and behaviour and other links to university sites, library homepage and other students web sites or weblogs.
Research Emphasis
It is important to note that for the purpose of fulfulling course requirements the students were grouped faculty-wise to do in-depth study of information need and information seeking behaviour of certain segment of users. I was assigned to focus on the information users from science and technology background.
Due to that segmentation, the bibliographies I collected, research that I would embark on and proposal that I need to prepare, will all be based on this given population.
My User Studies Notebook
This is a new section I add to reflect my reading and follow the steps I took when reading online. By having this notebook in the form of a blog, I do not have to change to scribbling on paper every time I really want to record any interesting points or passing thoughts.
When I need a back-up I would simply print this section off and trace my thoughts and reading journey by manual reading. If I would like to find anything from my online notebook, it would be easier because I can use Ctrl + F key to search the full-text rather than scanning the entire printed document with my eyes.
The Author
The author of this web site is a final semester MLIS student at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. She is currently in charge of a one-man-library in a marine consulting company in Petaling Jaya. Previously she worked as an assistant librarian at a National Library of Malaysia village library in her hometown, Machang, Kelantan. She can be contacted at yooknajibah [at] yahoo.com.
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Interesting Quotes
Technology is so much fun, but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin - American social historian and educator, 1914.
Apart from information retrieval there is virtually no other area of information science that has occasioned as much research effort and writing as "user studies".
Tom Wilson, 1981.
In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.
Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973), U.S. biographer.
