Barriers and enablers in access services: evidence from the JUBILEE project.

The JUBILEE project (JISC User Behaviour in Information Seeking: Longitudinal Evaluation of EIS) was set up at the University of Northumbria in response to a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) call for a qualitative longitudinal monitoring of Electronic Information Services (EIS) in United Kingdom. The issue of EIS performance in support of Higher Education (HE) is of growing concern today. Because HE institutions commit more revenue to systems and services, there is a need to find ways by which to assess the value of EIS. One of the most valid measures is user satisfaction. An important attribute of JUBILEE's holistic method is that it affords a formal approach to the collection and presentation of users' opinions of EIS. JUBILEE will be collecting and collating data on user information-seeking behaviour over a period of time and in a variety of disciplines. The longitudinal tracking of users in JUBILEE will highlight success criteria for information seeking from the users' viewpoint. This article describes early results and background information from the first cycle of the project.