Abstract:

This study intends to find a relation between the content information, usability, interface, user preference and popularity of academic databases. With the current growth rate in the number of scientific documents, academic databases play an important role in providing a vital channel between the users and the publications. The number of scientific documents used to double every fifty years until three decades ago, whereas recently studies demonstrate that the number of the scientific documents are doubled in the past twelve years, which displays an abrupt increase in the number of available titles. Although the ease of access provided by the digital-libraries help the users to find related topics and titles rapidly, but there still exist some issues such as coverage, limitations in presentation of related information and information overload. In this study, the main goal is to identify the most popular academic databases using an extended survey and investigate the user expectations from the academic databases. The survey provides list of most of the well-known academic databases and tries to find out user’s preferences, requirements and behaviors while looking for documents related to a keyword or topic. In addition, the survey inquires the users to provide further information about their expectations and requirements from an academic database. The results of the survey are then matched with the coverage, interface, facilities and usability of the most popular academic databases. The participants of the survey are post-graduate students, researchers and lecturers from Universiti Sains Malaysia.

Keywords:

Digital library, Academic database, Human computer interface, information visualization.