Year: 1990
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The main focus of this thesis is on the design of an electronic academic journal. The\nthesis commences with an examination of the way in which the paper-based journal\nsystem is used, in order to identify its associated problems, which may be alleviated\nthrough the use of the electronic medium, and those features which should be retained\nin an electronic journal system\nThe use of location as an incidental navigation cue by readers of both paper and\nelectronic documents is explored. It is concluded that, although of significant benefit,\ncertain types of location cues are lost in the electronic medium, and other navigation\naids must therefore be found.\nAlthough it may be possible to imitate paper documents on screen, there are several\narguments against such an approach. Hypertext systems enable the capabilities of the\nelectronic medium to be more fuIly exploited, and make it possible to use alternative\ndocument structures, but these may present problems for readers. The major difficulty\nwould appear to be that, due to the flexible access which hypertext permits, readers get\nlost. A series of studies was therefore conducted examining the utility of various\nfacilities in assisting readers to navigate through a hypertext document. A number of\nfeatures were identified which helped readers to relocate information from within the\nhypertext, and it would appear that the same facilities were of benefit for both\nhierarchical and web structured documents. It was also found that navigation efficiency\nwas positively correlated with the ability to construct an accurate map of the document's\nstructure.\nIn the final study, a database of journal articles containing the facilities derived from the\nprevious studies was constructed, and performance in an essay-question type task was\ncompared using two interfaces to the database. The frrst was a chronological list of the\narticles in the database, and the second contained the same navigation facilities as the\nindividual articles. Objective and subjective performance measures both pointed to the\nsuperiority of the second type of interface, and these findings are discussed in the\ncontext of future electronic journal systems.
Author: Annette Simpson
Language: English
Subfield: Library and Information Sciences
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W779993617