Mental models and user experience of a next-generation library catalogue

This dissertation investigates library users' experience and understanding of a library online public access catalogue (OPAC), Encore by Innovative Interfaces.This is done with particular reference to the mental models concept from cognitive science, underpinned by George Kelly's personal construct psychology.

Research techniques known to be useful in similar research on other information retrieval systems will be applied to a new area of next-generation catalogues. This further demonstrates that the application of repertory grid technique (RGT) to work on OPACs is viable. The application of this to the next-generation catalogues that have appeared in the last five years is novel, and provides a useful starting point for further research in this area.

Repertory grid technique is combined with cognitive walkthrough techniques based on ideas from Web usability testing to provide several views of user experience of the catalogue. This is analysed qualitatively and sketches of several models of the Encore catalogue are developed. It was found that library users' mental models of Encore tend to take cues from their experience of the Web, especially search engines, and concludes with guidelines for library staff expecting to train library users on a next-generation catalogue.