Questions and Instructions
Understanding and Serving Information Users
Due date: Sunday 19th June 2016, 11.55pm, Length: 2000 words, Weighting:
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This is an individual assignment.
This assignment allows you to practice your skills, search for evidence, and evaluate your
decisions with regards to serving different user communities, and designing and delivering
appropriate information services. It is significant for information professionals to better
understand the information-seeking behaviours of the intended users and to review the
issues associated with the development of information services that will best meet these
users’ needs.
The purpose of this assessment is to explore a community or group of users' information
needs and information behaviour to inform the design or redesign of services in the type of
organisation or environment that you have chosen to investigate. Based on the knowledge
about users, students will discuss how to design or redesign information services to better
support certain user communities. By completing this assignment, you will be able to:
- Articulate the importance of studying information behaviour of a certain community of users
- Review and document the existing research on information needs and information
behaviour of the community of users
- Apply your knowledge about the user community to analyse, evaluate, design, or improve
information services for the community.
This assessment consists of two parts: (1) a literature review and (2) a service design
proposal.
(1) Literature review
Review literature of the information needs and information behaviour of ONE user
community. Below are a few examples of user studies. But your options are not limited to the
list, you are encouraged to determine a user community of your interest. Discuss the topic
with the course coordinator if you are not sure or need some advice.
- Small business managers' information needs and their information seeking behaviour
What are small business managers' information needs? What does their information
seeking/searching behaviour look like? Are they interested in using business information
services at their local public library?
- Migrants’ information needs for public libraries
Migrants’ information needs, their access to information resources in public libraries, and
how the role of public libraries in meeting their needs.
- Information seeking behaviour of users with disabilities
Types of information needs by individuals with disabilities, factors affecting their needs, their
characteristics of information seeking, including the obstacles they face and the help they
need.
- People's behaviour of searching for government information
Australia has a well established history of access to government information and
publications by its citizens, much of it through libraries and archives. The Internet has led to
significant changes in the accessibility of government information. To provide a better
egovernment information service, it would be helpful to know how people search for
government information, including what government information/transaction (e.g. tax refund,
first home buyer's government grant) they look for.
- Academic users' use of full-text databases in university libraries
more and more full-text books and articles are available in library databases. You might have
already used electronic books and articles through a university library. Do you like the
service? Do you have any difficulties in using the search system? Does the service support
your research needs? Different databases deal with full-text differently. Do you prefer one
over another?
(2) Information service design proposal
Propose a design or redesign solution to information services for your chosen user
community based on the review of your selected topic in Part (1).
Students will write a proposal for information services design. The proposal content will
include the target user group, the type of organisation or environment (if applicable), the
types of information services/applications, how to deliver these services, and how to
evaluate these services. You also need to justify why you think the proposed information
services are important and appropriate to the target user group and will meet their
expectations. e.g. how information services may be better used/designed to serve the
population; how technology may be better used/designed to serve the population; and how
policy may be better informed/intervened for the population.
Each assignment will review 10 to 20 references (preferably peer-reviewed journal papers,
books, or book chapters) regarding the characteristics of the selected user community, their
information needs, information seeking behaviour, the information services and information
systems that they use, and the research methods that are used in user studies.The literature
review is expected to be approximately 1,000 words long, double spaced. The information
service design proposal is expected to be approximately 1,000 words long, double spaced.
FORMATTING OF ASSIGNMENTS
All papers must be double spaced using either Arial or New Times Roman with a 12 point
fonts (no 10 point fonts and Calibri).
Please use your last name as part of the file name when submitting electronic documents. It
makes it easier to determine which document belongs to which students when marking.
Please use either Harvard or APA citation style.
All words within an assignment including quotations and paraphrasing are included in word
counts. No exceptions.
Reference lists and appendices are not counted in the word counts.
Your name(s) must be on the file name and the document itself (inside in a header
preferably).
All pages that are longer than one page should have page numbers.
Assessments should be turned in on time.
Extensions will be granted if requested at least 24 hours prior to the due date. Only one
extension will be granted per student per assignment.
No extensions will be granted after the due date has expired.
A late penalty of 5% per day will be assessed against the marked grade for late
assignments. For example, if the grade is 72, the mark will be lowered 3.6 marks per day. So
if the assignment is two days late, the grade would be 64.8, rounded to 65.
Papers will be returned within 2-3 weeks.
Grammar, spelling, and citation style counts on all assignments including forum posts.
Proofread your assignments.
Spell and grammar check are fallible as is citation software.
Check the feedback sheet or rubric (we call it both) prior to starting the assignment.
When in doubt, ask. [Show Less]