Exploring Scholarly Perceptions of Knowledge Organisation Across Disciplines

This study seeks to investigate the mental models that researchers at the University of Glasgow and the University of Oxford have of the structure and organisation of knowledge in their own disciplines, and to explore the implications this might have upon scholars’ approaches to searching for literature. This study focuses on four disciplines--Chemistry, History, Law, and Medicine--and draws upon library UX and ethnographic techniques to explore perceptions of scholarly information across the Academy. It is hoped that the results of the study will help improve the information-seeking experiences of researchers by ensuring that library search systems take into account the expectations and assumptions (mental models) of users across disciplines.