Blogs serve multiple purposes, resulting in several types of blogs that vary greatly in terms of quality and content. It is important to evaluate the quality of blogs, which requires appropriate evaluation criteria. Unfortunately, there are minimal studies on framework and the specific criteria and indicators for evaluating the quality of blogs. Moreover, quality is related to user perception, and should therefore be evaluated by the receivers. This dissertation examines the criteria and indicators that blog users consider important for evaluating the quality of blogs, and develops a user-centered framework for evaluating quality by conducting user surveys and post-survey email interviews. The personal characteristics that affect the users’ choices of criteria to evaluate the quality of blogs are examined as well. The study’s findings include 1) the criteria that users consider important when evaluating the quality of blogs are content quality, usability, authority, and blog credibility; 2) the indicators that blog users consider most important for evaluating the quality of blogs are understandability, accuracy, believability, currency, ease of use, and navigation; and 3) gender, education level, age, profession, purpose of use, and specific interests affect the user’s choices of criteria for evaluating the quality of blogs. Future research may involve …

A current trend that has emerged as a result of the information age is information-seeking behavior. From individuals to large social institutions, information-seeking behavior is utilized to attain a wide variety of goals. This body of work investigates the information-seeking behaviors of police officers who work in police stations in the Turkish National Police force. The study utilizes Leckie et al.’s (1996) model of information-seeking behavior of professionals. The findings indicated that police officers initially consulted their personal knowledge and experience. Next, officers rely upon their colleagues and then official documents. These information sources were consulted in the context of both conducting tasks and staying current. However, contrary to expectation, they rarely consulted informants. In addition police officers rarely consulted printed journals, libraries, books and attendance at conferences as information sources. The results of this study show that there were significant differences in the information sources used by police officers based on their gender in the context of staying current. On the other hand, there were no significant differences in the context of conducting police station tasks, by gender. Surprisingly, there were no significant differences in the information sources used by police officers based on their educational level. There were …

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that motivate or impede faculty use of learning object repositories (LORs). The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) served as the theoretical framework for this study. Both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used in the study to explore two research questions relating to factors affecting faculty use of LORs. Research subjects were faculty and instructional staff users from two LORs: Orange Grove and Wisc-Online. This study was a two-phase design study. In Phase I, I conducted 13 interviews and analyzed data by a content analysis method. Phase II of the study was designed based on the results of Phase I. I collected data by a survey instrument from 38 respondents and analyzed the data by descriptive statistics and analysis of variance in Phase II. The results of the study indicated 22 factors as motivators for faculty use of LORs and 13 factors as barriers for faculty use of LORs. The study is the first to identify factors affecting faculty use of LORs from actual faculty users’ perspectives based on UTAUT. The study’s findings contribute to understanding the reasons that faculty use or do not use LORs and provide …

This study was designed to explore the relationships between users and interactive images. Three factors were identified and provided different perspectives on how users interact with images: image utility, information-need, and images with varying levels of interactivity. The study used a mixed methodology to gain a more comprehensive understanding about the selected factors. An image survey was used to introduce the participants to the images and recorded utility values when given a specific task. The interviews allowed participants to provide details about their experiences with the interactive images and how it affected their utility values. Findings from the study showed that images offering the highest level of interactivity do not always generate the highest utility. Factors such as personal preference, specifically speed and control of the image, affect the usefulness of the image. Participant also provided a variety of uses where access to interactive images would be beneficial. Educational settings and research tools are a few examples of uses provided by participants.