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Database retrieval user support Jadranka Stojanovski, M.Sc. Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb jadranka.stojanovski@ irb.hr Abstract User support as a part of CARNet (Croatian Academic and Research Network) online database service will be discussed. The service has more than 3000 registrated users, who are mostly unfamiliar with computer communications and database retrieval. Several aspects of user support are provided: first instructions, FAQ, a help desk, brochures, online guides, training courses etc. The paper includes an analysis of the evaluation forms collected from users through courses held during past two years. Some comparisons with server access statistics data has been made. Further service improvements and future development of user's support will be discussed. Introduction Online Database Centre (http://baze.irb.hr ) is CARNet (Croatian Academic and Research Network) project started in 1995 with the main goal to provide the users from academic and research community in Croatia with a free network access to commercial databases. The centre is maintained and hosted by the Institute Ruđer Bošković Library since very beginning. It provides the access to the most important databases from the field of science, engineering, medicine, social sciences and the arts. Databases available at the moment are as follows: 1. Current Contents – the Institute for Scientific Information eminent bibliographic database covering 7000 leading scientific journals; 2. MEDLINE – famous product of the National Library of Medicine, US; 3. INSPEC - the leading database for physics, electronic engineering and computing; 4. Agricola – very popular product of the National Agricultural Library, US; 1

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Page 1: HRVATSKO KNJIŽNIČNO VIJEĆE · Web viewdkermek@foi.hr Klinički zavod za kemiju xaivanis etopic@zg.tel.hr 3768 280 ZIMO znanstveni suradnik xbsekuli bane@rudjer.irb.hr odjelni liječnik

Database retrieval user support

Jadranka Stojanovski, M.Sc.Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb

jadranka.stojanovski@ irb.hr

AbstractUser support as a part of CARNet (Croatian Academic and Research Network) online database service will be discussed. The service has more than 3000 registrated users, who are mostly unfamiliar with computer communications and database retrieval. Several aspects of user support are provided: first instructions, FAQ, a help desk, brochures, online guides, training courses etc. The paper includes an analysis of the evaluation forms collected from users through courses held during past two years. Some comparisons with server access statistics data has been made. Further service improvements and future development of user's support will be discussed.

IntroductionOnline Database Centre (http://baze.irb.hr) is CARNet (Croatian Academic and Research Network) project started in 1995 with the main goal to provide the users from academic and research community in Croatia with a free network access to commercial databases. The centre is maintained and hosted by the Institute Ruđer Bošković Library since very beginning. It provides the access to the most important databases from the field of science, engineering, medicine, social sciences and the arts. Databases available at the moment are as follows:

1. Current Contents – the Institute for Scientific Information eminent bibliographic database covering 7000 leading scientific journals;

2. MEDLINE – famous product of the National Library of Medicine, US;3. INSPEC - the leading database for physics, electronic engineering and computing;4. Agricola – very popular product of the National Agricultural Library, US;5. ERIC – education database;6. Ovid Core Biomedical Collection – full-text database covering fifteen well known

medical journals;7. Evidence Based Medicine Review – full-text database providing clinical trials.

All databases are accessible through the OVID Technologies system. According to our surveys the users are satisfied with the system interface as well as with the quality of the database system in general. Databases are available on a site license basis, which allows unlimited access to the staff (and students) of the licensed institutions. Croatia is a small country with 80.000 students, academic staff and researchers and for this reasons the policy of the project is to negotiate, whenever possible the license agreements which would include all the members of CARNet (CARnet members consortia which involves all universities and research institutes).

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User supportIt is known that our users have little or no time and differ in amount of knowledge on IT, level of experience and professional orientation and education. For that reasons user support should be modular and adaptable to all users.In order to educate the user for successful database retrieval some requirements should be fulfilled. Knowledge about the content of the databases, its underlying data structure and the indexing system used in database are critical to successful information retrieval. No matter how friendly the database interface is, it will not help to the end-users to understand these concepts. In our experience, in spite the user friendly interfaces provided by Ovid system, there is still a substantial need for education, training and support.User support offered through this Centre is organised on several levels:

First instructionsAfter the registration process each member receives a basic information "package" which includes:

logon procedure reminder; information about different programs for accessing the databases; information about how to get additional information and help.FAQ

General FAQ is provided on system level, as well as for specific databases.Help desk support

Although there is phone assistance provided, the help desk is mainly focused on the e-mail support. The queries we find to be the easiest and quickest to answer are usually those connected with keyboard situation (very often it is connected with Caps Lock button being turned on) or those concerning with restarting of the user’s passwords or checking the logon name. The most time-consuming queries are those connected with communication problem (modem), downloading and software settings. In these cases, software or hardware troubleshooting, step-by-step guidance is often required. It is sometimes necessary to contact the library technical expert or to do checking on the library machine before answering the question. It usually involves several phone calls or e-mail correspondence with the user.These are the types of help desk queries, listed by their frequency:

re-set password; check login name; CARNet Internet access; guide in setting up communication software; connection problems; guide through logging in procedure; cursor key problems; modem specific problems; search query; downloading problems.User guides and field descriptions

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Ovid user guide is available in the both web and printed format. It is available for DOS and Windows version of the program. The guide itself consist of several parts: introduction, general procedures, databases: structure and indexing, database searching, command syntax, searching with sets, index – display & browsing, displaying documents, printing, saving strategies & documents, executing save strategies, search tools (including permuted index command, subheading command, thesaurus etc.).For each database detailed field description is provided, with the full name of the field, field abbreviation, description and examples.

BrochuresAn informative brochure has been distributed to the academic and institute libraries as a part of the Service promotion campaign. This brochure contains the text in Croatian and English. It explains the purpose and mission of the CARNet Online Database Centre and gives an introduction to database descriptions in a very friendly manner with lots of explanatory and colourful illustrations.

Web supportBesides the important e-mail support from the project and system administrators, we use the Web pages as a vehicles for both, technical (download and installation of client software etc) and database search support (user guide and field descriptions). We encourage our users to read Web pages by providing lots of necessary and vital information and by updating pages regularly and promptly.

Training coursesUp to now there have been no information literacy courses organised as the part of the Croatian university programs. Therefore, our scientists and researchers lack the elementary information retrieval skills. It is even more so when it comes to electronic database retrieval. This is the reason why our centre, besides servers maintenance and license negotiation, does lots of activities on the plan of training and users' education. The training courses are organised, on the regular basis, two or three times a year. The course programs are tailored to meet the needs of specific users' interest groups according to their research field or discipline. The training is organised as a comprehensive three-day training course and usually has the following structure:

1st day – general introduction and Current Contents database (for beginners and advanced users). The objectives of the beginner course are to explain necessary hardware and software and to give an introduction to the system, the scope and structure of the CC database and basic search techniques. The objectives of the advanced course are to highlight the advanced search capabilities of the system and to show how professional search techniques provided by the database system can be used to execute more complex searches. 2nd day – Medline advanced course including indexing structure.3rd day – other databases (depending on structure and interest of the participants).

Evaluation forms analysis and server user statisticsEach course success and users' satisfaction is evaluated through the evaluation form distributed to the participants. The evaluation form consist of two parts:

questions about user themselves and their information retrieval needs;

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questions about the trainer course and trainer.The purpose of the evaluation form is a) to get information about the audience, their profile, knowledge and retrieval habits and b) to improve the quality of the courses. UsersUsers' data collected in the database gives following information: institution and department of the employee, education degree and qualification, working position, date of birth and date of account opening. There are about 9000 active researchers in Croatia registered and funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology. Users of the Centre are employees of 41 academic and research institutions in Croatia (Figure 1.). Due to significant scientific population in Zagreb, even 76% users are settled in Zagreb (1524). Other users are from other University centres in Croatia such as: Rijeka (8%), Split (7%) and Osijek (4%).

Figure 1. Number of users coming from different academic and research institutions.

To obtain users' age profile relevant data was analysed. The biggest users group is between 26 and 35 years old followed by the age group of 36-45 (Figure 2). Only one hundred and three users are younger than 26 and they represent students' population. This young population should have highest priority in the next period. A closer cooperation with the university management as well as with academic libraries should be established in order to promote this service and its possibilities among students. The average user age is 39,6 years.

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Figure 2. The age structure of users.

The biggest number of users is from the field of biomedicine and chemistry, which corresponds with the percentage in the total scientific population (Figure 3). The number of users in the field of physics and social sciences is very low. For physicist there is a well-known reason: they are oriented on the pre-print archives (full-text) instead of bibliographic databases. Scholars coming from social sciences are more oriented on the conventional (paper) resources.

Figure 3. User’s field of research

Training courses and trainersEvery training course and every trainer is evaluated after the course. The second part of the evaluation form is designed for this particular purpose. This part of the evaluation form contains several questions:

Do we have to organise separate training courses for beginners and for advanced users?

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Is there a need to pay more attention to complex search, basic search, technical details, and structure of the database)?

Is the level of the training course appropriate? Did you get the answers on your questions? Did the course meet your expectations? How frequently these courses should be organised? Was the course timing suitable? Is the course duration appropriate?

A lot of users think that more attention should be addressed on the basic search (Figure 4) which can be useful guideline for teachers in the future.

Figure 4. Guidelines for teacher

Assuming that the numbers of questions answered by the trainers can be used as an evaluation of user's satisfaction, it can be concluded that three quarters of the total user number are satisfied. This percentage shows that courses are well prepared and targeted (Figure 5).

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Figure 5. Satisfaction with the content

Future developmentMore intensive promotion of the CARNet Online Database Centre should be done in order to improve usage of the existing databases. This promotion should encourage the researchers to use the system, as well as to help them to recognise and accept the Service as a reliable support to their work. It would be very important to do promotional campaign for the students as well.There is still enough room for improvement and development when it comes to basic information and training courses. Basic information package should contain: an application form, information on a logon procedure, a general user guide with necessary details (appropriate hardware and software, how to perform a simple subject and author search, how to print and download search results), settings for different popular communication software packages and a list of training courses. These packages should be modified according to the users' feedback and help desk suggestions.In addition training courses should provide an opportunity for users to ask about the problems they face in seeking information as well as the time necessary for trainers to answer the questions and give a practical demonstration. As users access the system remotely and independently, training gives an opportunity for then to meet other users. This experience can broaden user’s awareness of the potential of the system and generate a greater sense of involvement. In order to make this possible, every user should have his own computer during the course, connected to the online database system. The library should host at least three-four courses each year.CARNet Online Database Centre should be much more connected with libraries and library services (full-text document requests). Librarians all over the libraries will be involved in the permanent user education.

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Discussion and conclusionUser support has played a significant role in the development of the CARNet Online Database Centre and has comprised several aspects: starting information, the help desk, online web support, user’s guides, FAQ’s, brochures, and beginner and advanced training courses. Free of charge, training courses for users are held in the Centre at least 2 to 3 times per year. The profile of users has been analysed as well as their performance of searches in the Centre for online databases (CARNet). The age structure of the users shows that average user is to old (39 years) and that strong promotion of the Centre inside student population should be done. The most accessed database is Current Contents, which is the best known and needed in terms of evaluation of published articles by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Technology (61%).

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