Information Storage and Retrieval
Hamidreza Radfar
Abstract
IntroductionIdentifying access points to digital information resources and determining their importance from the point of view of specialists in each field plays an important role in retrieving the required resources. Knowing what retrieval points are used by researchers and experts to access digital ...
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IntroductionIdentifying access points to digital information resources and determining their importance from the point of view of specialists in each field plays an important role in retrieving the required resources. Knowing what retrieval points are used by researchers and experts to access digital information resources can have a positive effect on the redesign of information systems. The purpose of this research is to study and identify the importance of access points to digital information resources from the perspective of humanities researchers. Literature reviewArastopour (1999) in a research aimed at investigating the problems related to access points in computer catalogs, states that changing the approach in computer catalogs can lead to the opening of new horizons in the discussion of the structure and display of records. Bevilacqua (2005) conducted a study at the University of Parma with the aim of investigating the organization of electronic journal titles from the perspective of humanities users, and stated that users provide multiple access points (such as inserting an alphabetical list of titles and a list of topics on the website) to electronic journals for more relevant retrieval. Abazari and Babaei (2013) found in their research that web page designers give more importance to metadata than specific metadata schemes such as Dublin. According to the research results of Rathi Tehrani & et al. (2013), from the point of view of experts, more than 70% of the elements of the standards were considered important and required for cataloging museum objects. Eichler & et al. (2021) compared existing metadata schemes and conducted studies on the production of metadata elements in a data management infrastructure. They concluded that an evaluation of existing metadata models shows that none are sufficiently general so far, as their design basis is not appropriate. Burke & et al. (2022) studied the available metadata and presented a model for organizing and creating a digital language archive based on people's characteristics. By studying 12 open-source metadata management tools, Singh and Madalli (2023) found gaps in metadata management programs and proposed a conceptual framework for research data management. Chapepa, Ngwira and Mapulanga (2023) investigated the methods of creating metadata in an academic data repository in the subject area of agriculture and natural resources using the experts' point of view and found that the only metadata used was Dublin Core. MethodologyThe present research is practical. The method of conducting this research is survey-descriptive and has a case study approach. The research community in this work is the academic staff members of the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. To receive the opinions and views of the academic staff regarding the access points, a researcher-made questionnaire with a reliability of 0.894 was used to collect the required data. The data collected through the questionnaires were entered into separate tables and analyzed through the Excel program. ResultsIn terms of the importance of access points and retrieval fields of e-books, the subject, title, and main author are the most important fields of interest to researchers. In the field of lithographic books, the title, author and subject are the most important things, followed by the date of publication, calligraphy, and notes. The most important fields of attention of academic staff members in the field of searching manuscript books are title, author and subject, and the type of calligraphy and the main category are in the next ranks. The most important fields in the digital content of publications were title, call number, language and main topic. In the case of theses, the title, the author's field of study and the language of the work are recognized as the most important fields. The important fields for retrieving research projects from the point of view of academic staff members were the title, topic and employer of the project. The most important fields identified for retrieving digital documents are the subject, language and official title of the document. In terms of the importance of access points and retrieving fields of software and multimedia, the creator and subject are of the highest importance, followed by language, content duration, and file formats. DiscussionFrom the point of view of academic faculty members, the most important access points for widely used types of digital content, such as e-books, lithographs and manuscripts, are the title, subject, and creator of the content. Regarding digital content in the form of publications, dissertations, theses, and documents, language and history are also important. Regarding different types, there are also significant cases that may show some kind of difference of opinion among the people of human sciences. For example, in the case of electronic books, whether there is a photo, picture, diagram, or table in a book is not very important for humanities experts, but the textual content is more valuable for them. Also, the year of publication of the e-book is not very important for the humanities experts, because most of the content produced in the humanities does not become worthless over time, or the translator of the works is of great importance for the people of the humanities. In the case of lithographic or manuscript books, calligraphy and calligraphers are noteworthy. The notes, which were not very important for humanities specialists in the normal book, are among the valuable items in these works because valuable information about the copies is included in the notes. Regarding the specific fields of digital resources, the file format of digital resources and their size are important items. ConclusionThis research states that it is necessary to make changes in the design of user interfaces, the way of tagging and organizing digital content, as well as the arrangement and display of search results pages, according to the view of humanities experts. It is hoped that the results of this research will be useful for social catalogers in choosing appropriate access points and creating effective labels and tags for all types of digital content; for catalogers of digital resources in order to be aware of access points and important retrieval fields, to focus on it and save time and increase user satisfaction; for designers of information systems in order to define the file structure, organize pages for data entering, describe and organize digital resources, design pages and search facilities, develop search results customized facilities, design search results display pages; and for the managers of scientific-research websites in order to use access points and metadata elements in order to improve the accessibility of their digital content and facilitate the dissemination of digital information and improve the ranking of their websites.
