As part of ongoing investigation of information seeking in electronic environments, a comparison of how expertise in a topic area and expertise in online searching was made. Computer scientists and online search specialists conducted assigned searches in a HyperCard database on the topic of hypertext. Both groups of experts were able to conduct successful searches and outperformed a novice control group. Search specialists took slightly less time than the domain experts, modified queries by adding terms found in the text, and tended to focus on query formulation. Domain experts focused on the text and used their domain knowledge to further question answering.
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