Project Description
LibRes Assistant is an open source project designed specifically to help students, faculty, and other researchers conduct research in libraries. The system is a research tool that allows users to save the results of their searches by keyword and location. The system will track searches from databases, personal computer files, and Internet search engines. The records will be stored in a searchable database. The system can store records in different categories specified by the user. The following choices will be provided for the user: to save the query, URL or location, citation, entire document, or highlighted section of the document. Users can choose to save selected resources any way they wish. The system will also include a keyword feature that will scan articles and text that are saved in the database for related keywords. The user must request this action by clicking on the “keyword search” feature. When a user has completed a research session, they must save the file locally or on a disk.
LibRes Assistant will be helpful for people conducting research
in many ways. It will allow users to keep track of the search results that are
relative to their information needs in a quick and efficient manner. It will
also minimize the amount of documents that must be printed. Users will no longer
have to copy and paste relevant text, URL’s, or citations during the search
process. They will simply click on the search result and send it to the LibRes
Assistant program to be recorded. Another advantage is that users will be able
to highlight sections of articles that are relevant to their research. The user
will not have to search through the entire article later because the program
will only save the highlighted section that they have chosen.
Development Tools
LibRes is a web-based application that can be integrated into a web browser. The system is an interface that is designed to help the research process. The results are stored in a SQL database that is configured by the individual user. This system is designed for use on multiple platforms including Window, MacOS, and Linux. The project is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
Target Audience
LibRes Assistant is intended for use in academic, corporate, and public libraries because of the nature of the project. The end users are students, faculty, researchers, and other patrons in libraries. Many research projects are conducted in libraries and this project would assist the users by making the research process quicker and more efficient. Libraries could use this program for free because it is open source. Users will benefit from the opportunity to conduct research in libraries where they have access to numerous databases and other information sources. They will be able to save their results and findings in an organized database to be analyzed later. The files could be taken home for analysis because the program can be installed on their personal computers.
The open source nature of this project allows flexibility in terms of who can
actually benefit from this research tool. Secondary end users could be any individual
who installs the program on their own computer and uses it to help them track
research, browsing, and other information gathering activities.
Description of Need
This project is needed because of the vast amount of information resources that are available to people today. The Internet and online databases provide excellent resources for researches, but the process of saving and organizing search results can be extremely tedious, time consuming, and difficult.
There are not any commercial alternatives to this project that I am aware of. I identified this information need because of my personal research experience. It takes a great deal of time to print out information, write down URL’s, highlight documents, and then organize them topically. Researchers need a tool that allows them to spend time in the library searching for additional sources instead of organizing and recording the sources they have already found.
There has been a great deal of research about the searching habits of users. The goal of most web searches is to search for resources that help the user achieve their goals (Rose, 2004). Knowing the users goals can help improve search engines and search tools. Most users conduct “informational searchers” to find information about a certain topic (Rose, 2004). But, finding information is extremely complex because of the numerous resources and results that can be returned from one query. This project will assist users in this process by allowing them a quick way to keep track of all the relevant results they have found in the search process. The research process often evolves through a series of steps (Teevan, 2004). Most users conduct searches and then expand on these results to explore further. It is important to keep track of this process so that users can go back to their results and branch out in other ways. This tool will not only record all the resources that the user finds helpful, but it will store the results in a searchable database. Another helpful feature is that the program will suggest relevant keywords relating to a specific article or section of text. These keyword suggestions will give the users new ideas for creating queries. This will make the search process easier, quicker, and allow for more exhaustive research on a particular topic.