Abstract
Effective use of information retrieval systems requires that users know when to – temporarily – cease searching to do some reading and where to start reading. In hierarchically structured documents, users can to some extent interchange searching and reading by entering the text at different levels in the structure. Based on an experiment where 83 subjects solved 20 tasks each, we find that the subjects spend at least one third of their time reading, irrespective of whether the system they use offers browsing and/or querying. The subjects prefer reading the text in chunks that span multiple levels of the structure. As much as 21% of the tasks are solved by subjects who enter the text at a level above the texts containing the answer and rely on reading from there. In relation to queries, multi-level texts are used to extend hits with more detail or, occasionally, more context. Designers should consider how information retrieval systems could exploit document structure to return the best points to support reading, rather than merely hits
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the IFIP TC 13. International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT '01), Tokyo, Japan, July 9-13, 2001 |
| Publisher | IOS Press |
| Publication date | 2001 |
| Pages | 537-544 |
| Publication status | Published - 2001 |
| Event | How Are Researching and Reading Interwieved during Retrieval from Hierarchically Structured Documents? - Duration: 29 Nov 2010 → … |
Conference
| Conference | How Are Researching and Reading Interwieved during Retrieval from Hierarchically Structured Documents? |
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| Period | 29/11/2010 → … |
Keywords
- Faculty of Science
- Information Retrieval
- structured documents
- searching
- reading
- context information
- User study