Examining Online Help Features

摘要

In the digital age, when information searching becomes part of everyday life, people cannot find needed information from just one type of information retrieval (IR) system. They search web search engines to find web documents; online databases for scholarly articles; online public access catalogs (OPACs) for book information; and digital libraries for special collections. It is impossible for the general public—and possibly even for information professionals-to be experts in every type of IR system. Thus, they rely on Help features in these systems. But how helpful are these Help functions?