Abstract
Abstract Boolean systems still constitute most of the installed base of online public access catalogues (OPACs) in the French universities even if many studies have shown that Boolean operators are not frequently used by ‘non‐librarian’ users (by contrast with professional librarians). The first study examined the use of Boolean operators by French university students; In the second study, elaborated to evaluate the impact of information search expertise on this use, Boolean operators are explicitly presented and participants were explicitly invited to use them. We assumed that university students would not frequently use the operators in searching, and that even if they were explicitly invited to make use of them. Results obtained with the first study based on transaction logs analyses confirmed that French university students did not frequently use Boolean operators. The impact of information search expertise, analysed in the second study, compared three levels of expertise: Novice (university students), intermediate (future professional librarians), and expert (professional librarians). Results showed that, even if the three groups were invited to use Boolean operators, this use increased significantly with the level of information search expertise. University students, if they manage procedural functions of connectives in natural language, do not always manage the whole set of procedural functions carried by such connectives when used in the documentary language. So, the relevance of presenting explicit Boolean operators in the OPACs when users are ‘non‐librarians’ is questioned.
Published Version
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