Understanding the behavior of users is becoming more important as information continues to migrate to electronic formats. The 1994 Goldspiel Memorial Research Grant,"Users' Choice of Filtering Methods for Electronic Text," by Dr. Raya Fidel, Professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of Washington, and Michael Crandall, Intranet Librarian, Boeing Company, focuses on considerations used by managers and engineers at Boeing Company to filter full-text electronic technical periodicals. The project examines whether there is a relationship between users' online searching methods, their profession and their job responsibilities. This book is a technical report, and it uses a variety of methods to investigate the filtering process. It is perhaps most useful to those interested in developing individual end-user "filtering" profiles for selecting specific information.

The publication examined in the research was the Gartner Group Reports, which was electronically delivered once-a-month in a "filtered" or "non-filtered" format to Puget Sound area Boeing employees. When subscribing to the Reports, users could choose the "browser" unfiltered method, in which they received all the titles, or the "library user" filtered method, in which intermediary librarians helped the users develop individual profile criteria for selecting a subset of articles to view. The primary reasons users subscribed to the Reports were to use them on the job and to keep current. There were patterns found among respondents both for why a report was relevant and why a report was not relevant. Both lists included factors dealing with the subject matter, as well as the form, the content, and the writing style of the report. In addition, subjective and situational factors were important to users in determining relevance. The results of the study indicate the complexity involved in establishing profile criteria that provide useful filtering mechanisms. The full technical report is also available from SLA.