Online subject searching of humanities PhD students at a Swedish university

• Published in: Journal of documentation Vol. 79; no. 7; pp. 308 - 329
• Main Authors: Golub, Koraljka, Tan, Xu, Liu, Ying-Hsang, Tyrkkö, Jukka
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bradford Emerald Publishing Limited 2023; Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Subjects: Algorithms; Bibliographic data bases; Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap; Computer Science with specialization in Human-Computer Interaction; Controlled vocabularies; Datavetenskap med inriktning mot människa-datorinteraktion; Documents; Graduate studies; Human-Computer Interaction; Humanities; Humanities PhD students; Indexing; Information literacy; Information retrieval; Information searching; Information seeking behavior; Knowledge organization systems; Library and Information Science; Library catalogs; Library resources; Människa-dator interaktion; Query expansion; Search engines; Search interfaces; Search strategies; Social networks; Students; Subject indexing; Subject searching; Training; User interfaces; Humanities PhD students; Search interfaces; Controlled vocabularies; Subject searching; Information searching; Knowledge organization systems
• ISSN: 0022-0418; 1758-7379; 1758-7379
• DOI: 10.1108/JD-03-2023-0044

PurposeThis 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/approachThe 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.FindingsMost 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/valueThe 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.