”I feel that I'm only doing what I know I'm able to” : A study of the user-friendliness of a web-based library catalogue from a user-perspective

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to examine whether a web-based library catalogue is to be considered user-friendly. We have examined this from a user-perspective by interviewing users of a web-based catalogue at a public library. In order to get a picture of the user-friendliness of a catalogue, the thesis is centred upon the following questions: How is a web-based catalogue used? What problems do the users experience? How is the catalogue perceived by its users? Since the producers of these catalogues now are taking into account the research upon human-computer interaction, we are also interested in finding out whether a web-based catalogue is more user-friendly than a more traditional OPAC. We do this by comparing the results of our examination with earlier studies of OPAC use. In this thesis we show that users of a web-based library catalogue are positive towards the catalogue and find it easy to use. They are satisfied with their search results, even though they do not choose the most appropriate search path. In this way, we can consider the catalogue user-friendly. On the other hand, we have found that users experience a lot of problems when searching a web-based OPAC - the same problems that are identified in earlier user-studies. These problems include expressing search queries (especially subject queries), understanding how the search is carried out and the meaning of keywords. Considering this, a web-based library catalogue is not more user-friendly than a traditional one.Uppsatsnivå: