One of the papers at the ACM Digital Libraries 99 conference last week was a
comparison by Rutgers University of two interfaces to information
services.The first was HERMES which was a common interface approach, i.e.
access to each information service was seperate but the use interface was
similar for each service. The second was HERA which was an integrated
interface approach (i.e. allowing access to all the information services
simultaneously). The information services were congressional records, the
federal register, Wall Street journal and the financial times. A survey was
done on 28 users (which I think is a little small) as to which interface
they preferred. Only 29% preferred HERA (the integrated approach, which is
being adopted by some of the hybrid library models) whilst 64% preferred
HERMES (the common interface approach), with 7% preferring both equally.
Inconclusive given the limited user set and information set, but possibly
indicative that we still need some user studies on which approach the users
really want (as opposed to want we thing they may want).
Matthew Dovey
Oxford University
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