Towards the design of a full text, searchable database: implications from a study of journal usage

Abstract

Editor's note: This is a preprint of the paper "Towards the design of a full text, searchable database: implications from a study of journal usage" published in the British Journal of Academic Librarianship. The preprint title is slightly different. Abstract: The present paper reports on a study of journal usage amongst professional researchers. The aim of the study was to shed light on how journals are used with a view to making recommendations about the development of a full-text, searchable database that would support such usage. The results indicate that levels of usage vary over time, the range of journals covered is small and readers overlook a large proportion of the contents of articles. Furthermore, three reading strategies are observed which indicate that the structure of journal articles is not ideally suited to their uses. The implications of these findings for developing suitable computer-based applications are discussed.