Browsing and searching in a faceted information space: A longitudinal study of PubMed users' interactions with a novel display tool

The study adopts a naturalistic approach to investigate users' interaction with a browsable interface designed to facilitate query construction for PubMed bibliographic database. The purpose of the study is twofold: firstly, to test the usefulness of a browsable interface utilizing the principle of faceted classification; secondly, to investigate users' preferred query submission methods in different problematic situations.;An interface that incorporated multiple query submission methods: the conventional single-lined query box as well as methods associated with faceted classification display was constructed. Participants' interactions with the interface were monitored remotely over a period of ten weeks, during which information about their problematic situations and information retrieval behaviors were also collected. We explain why the traditional controlled experiment is not adequate in answering our research questions and the rationales behind a naturalistic approach.;Our findings show that there is indeed a selective compatibility between query submission methods provided by the new interface and users' problematic situations. The query submission methods associated with the display were found to be the preferred search tools when users' information needs were vague and the search topics unfamiliar. Some of the participants, however, experienced difficulty in expressing their queries using facets.;The study demonstrates the validity of representing users' problematic situations along dimensions such as specifiedness of the search question, familiarity with the search topic, comprehensiveness needed for the search, and self-assessed search stage. The findings further support the theoretical proposition that users engaging in information retrieval processes with a variety of problematic situations demands different treatments. Rather than treating the information retrieval system as a general purpose tool, the author argues that more attention should be given to the interaction between the functionality of the tool and the characteristics of users' problematic situations.