Informationskvalitet
informationssökares syn på kvalitet
The aim of this thesis is to examine how different kinds of information seekers are evaluating information quality in the information flow online. To address the problem stated, qualitative interviews were carried out with a librarian as a reference person and a group consisting of journalists and scientists. The result of the study implies that the reference person is well aware of the strategies employed by her in the search process. However, the respondents are not aware of the strategies they are actually using. An explanation is the respondents lack of education in information seeking. Due to the respondents different aims of the information seeking, there appears to be a difference between the journalists and the scientists methods in both seeking information and evaluating information quality. The scientists mainly use information sources where the information already has passed a quality control and hence they dont perform quality evaluation themselves. The journalists are often performing more comprehensive information seeking using more sources. Therefore, they perform more quality controls as compared to the scientists. However, none of the respondents are really aware of the quality controls they are performing, but rather trust their instincts on whats information quality. Moreover, the respondents seem to have either a product based or production based perspective on information quality. The main conclusion of the study is that the most important criteria used by the respondents to judge information quality and to receive their goals with the search are: reliability, credibility and objectivity, precision and current interest.