A Study of Multilanguage Users’ Second-Language Information Needs and Seeking Contexts

• Main Authors: Jui-Shan Chang, 張瑞珊
• Other Authors: June-Jei Kuo
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93460492990371319287

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 圖書資訊學研究所 === 103 === As the internet population increases, more and more users start to consciously learn, read and seek for diverse information resources. The multilanguage user becomes one that cannot be ignored. To enhance the retrieval function of systems, the impact on multilanguage users’ language skills, subject fields, types of multilanguage information needs and search preferences needs to be concernd and explored in depth. The subjects of the research are Chinese native speakers who have learned English and at least one other foreign language. The research conducts questionnaire, in-depth interviews and observation method to collect data and make further comparison for users’ types of multilanguage information needs, searching contexts, preferences and expectiation for multilanguage support functions. The finding of research: 1.The multilanguage users’ main motivation is personal interest, followed by the research needs. 2.The multilanguage users would conduct search with a foreign language which they had ever learnd only when they have strong motivation. Otherwise, they would just browse. 3.The multilanguage users decide the search language on the purpose and the language familiarity, and the decision would change over time. 4.The multilanguage users have the second-language information need no matter what level of language proficiency they are and always keep an open mind to unfamiliar languages. 5.The multilanguage users’ occupation, language proficiency and personal interest would have an influence on their searching contexts and types of information needs. 6.For the multilanguage users, when searching second-language information, the most commonly used catalog is the university catalog, the most commonly used search engine is Google, and the most commonly used translate tool is Google Translate. Some respondents would make use of Google as corpus to search vocabulary and phrase usage. Some would use Wikipedia to construct basic knowledge between different langauges. And some are accustomed to using mobile devices to search and browse second-language information. 7.For the multilanguage users, “To allow user to add professional terms in their own glossary”, “To annotate in Chinese or translate the information of rare languages” and “To provide reference sentences and then assist user to select the translation results” are the most three important functions which need to be enhanced by now.