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Preliminary observations and users' behaviour
1 Institute of Marine Biology of Crete, P.O.Box 2214, 71003 Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Introduction
The Mediterranean island site of the Institute of Marine Biology of Crete confers certain advantages to marine science research; these do not, however, include speedy and easy communication. Because of the remoteness of its location, far from the capital of Greece, which itself is on the southern periphery of Europe; because of the erratic deliveries of what is already derisively termed snailmail, the Institute of Marine Biology of Crete is particularly conscious of the benefits to be derived from online communication. Its Information Design and Development Department had shown interest in the construction of a World Wide Web site in January 1995 but although agreed in principle, the heavy workload entailed forced postponement of this initiative.
The 21st IAMSLIC conference in Southampton in October 1995, had as its theme "Information across the Waves: the World as a Multimedia Experience". However, most of the contributions concerned electronic online rather than digital offline dissemination. The very rapid spread of the Internet and its potential for research publications were accentuated by the very convincing demonstrations, made mostly by American marine research institutional librarians, of the opportunities via the Internet.
As a direct result of the IAMSLIC Conference, construction of the IMBC was given top priority. By 11th November 1995, the IMBC World Wide Web site (www.imbc.gr) was up and running, and a formal announcement launching the site was made on 27th November. Two of the aims of the site relevant to the present paper are as follows:
- to promote the activities and facilities of the IMBC nationally and internationally
- to provide unique services to the marine science community by making available resources such as abstracts, bibliographies and other types of databases such as glossaries and directories.
The site, measured by means of criteria in current use, was more successful than anticipated, with more than 13500 accesses, or 'hits' as they are known, in the first 30 days. It is by counting these hits that the use (and by implication the usefulness) of the Internet is measured. It has been estimated that there are at least 20 million people worldwide, in search of information, entertainment and products. A blend of ignorance and perhaps also some disingenuous disinformation about the financial opportunities has resulted in the Internet being presented in some areas as the modern equivalent of the "licence to print money" of the first UK commercial TV licences. There is a widespread conviction that people will pay money for information, and therefore new sites are being created on the World Wide Web at a rate of about one every minute. According to IMO (1994) (The Internet and the European Information Industry)(1), 35000 electronic journal articles are added to the Internet every day.
Nevertheless, a search through the available literature shows that many people express serious doubts about marketing, and the marketing strategies suitable for the Internet. As Sheila Webber of the University of Strathclyde says in "Online pricing: changing strategies in a changing world" (2), "since the beginning of online, pricing has been a problem" and goes on to describe the pros and cons of methods such as Connect time, output charge, entry fee + hit charge (the latter method favoured by many bibliographic database services). At present it would seem that there is a move towards layering, i.e., charging different prices for each successive layer of information accessed, or what is known as product bundling. This method is offered by many publishing houses: print + CD-ROM + access to full-text journals and abstracts.
Yet it has been discovered (in some cases, the hard way) that the majority of users will almost never pay a subscription fee for access to a Web site. In addition, when much of the information has previously been free of charge, as is the case on the Internet, users do not readily accept information charges, and take great care to avoid them.
In the light of the literature search, the IMBC decided that it was necessary to have more information about user behaviour, to establish whether there were any patterns in the accessing of online information in order to make relatively informed choices as to the best way to continue development, in particular to examine the usefulness of making a resource such as extended abstracts available online.
Introduction | Methods | Results | Discussion
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