The information-seeking behaviour of the virtual scholar: from use to users

Based on paper presented at the 31st UKSG Conference, Torquay, April 2008 The case is presented for moving on from monitoring activity in the virtual scholarly space to studying the virtual information seeking of users and then relating that to diversity, satisfaction and scholarly outcomes. The article shows that, thanks to new methodological techniques that enable us to obtain deep and robust insights of what goes on in the virtual environment, it is now possible to obtain such data. These methods, using deep log analysis, are outlined and results illustrated in regard to CIBER’s Virtual Scholar Research Programme and their use in three major, national research studies – the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded ‘National E-books Observatory Project’,The JISC/British Library (BL)-funded Google Generation study and the Research Information Network (RIN)-funded ‘Evaluating the Usage and Impact of E-journals in the UK’.