An evaluation of thesaurus-enhanced visual interfaces for multilingual digital libraries

Ali Shiri, Stan Ruecker, Lindsay Doll, Matthew Bouchard, Carlos Fiorentino

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

In this paper, we describe a comparative user evaluation of two multilingual thesaurus-enhanced visual user interfaces, namely T-Saurus and Searchling, developed for digital libraries. The study used 25 academic users carrying out three search tasks on both user interfaces to the UNESCO digital portal, holding 400,000 documents. It applied usability and affordance strength questionnaires, interviews, thinkalouds, and direct observation to investigate users' evaluation of the key components of both user interfaces, namely multilingual features and thesaurus and search functions. The empirical data gathered will be useful for designers of search interfaces that use thesaurus and multilingual features. Results of the study show that users were able to successfully carry out the search tasks using thesaurus-enhanced search interfaces. However, they preferred Searchling for its flexible language option, thesaurus browsing and visualization.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationResearch and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries - International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, TPDL 2011, Proceedings
Pages236-243
Number of pages8
DOIs
StatePublished - 2011
Externally publishedYes
EventInternational Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, TPDL 2011 - Berlin, Germany
Duration: Sep 26 2011Sep 28 2011

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume6966 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

OtherInternational Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, TPDL 2011
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityBerlin
Period9/26/119/28/11

Keywords

  • Information Retrieval
  • Multilingual Digital Libraries
  • Multilingual Thesauri
  • User Evaluation
  • Visual Interfaces

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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