Online subject searching of humanities PhD students at a Swedish university

• Purpose – This exploratory study aims to help contribute to the understanding of online information search behaviour of PhD students from different humanities fields, with a focus on subject searching.Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is based on a semi-structured interview within which the participants are asked to conduct both a controlled search task and a free search task. The sample comprises eight PhD students in several humanities disciplines at Linnaeus University, a medium-sized Swedish university from 2020.Findings – Most humanities PhD students in the study have received training in information searching, but it has been too basic. Most rely on web search engines like Google and Google Scholar for publications’ search, and university’s discovery system for known-item searching. As these systems do not rely on controlled vocabularies, the participants often struggle with too many retrieved documents that are not relevant. Most only rarely or never use disciplinary bibliographic databases. The controlled search task has shown some benefits of using controlled vocabularies in the disciplinary databases, but incomplete synonym or concept coverage as well as user unfriendly search interface present hindrances.Originality/value – The paper illuminates an often-forgotten but pervasive challenge of subject searching, especially for humanities researchers. It demonstrates difficulties and shows how most PhD students have missed finding an important resource in their research. It calls for the need to reconsider training in information searching and the need to make use of controlled vocabularies implemented in various search systems with usable search and browse user interfaces.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Övrig annan humaniora (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Other Humanities not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Annan teknik -- Interaktionsteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Other Engineering and Technologies -- Interaction Technologies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Controlled vocabularies

Information searching

Knowledge organization systems

Search interfaces

Subject searching

Humanities PhD students

Computer Science with specialization in Human-Computer Interaction

Datavetenskap med inriktning mot människa-datorinteraktion

Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap

Library and Information Science

Människa-dator interaktion

Human-Computer Interaction

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)