A Digital Library Success Model for Computer Science Student Use of a Meta-Search System

The success of any product of Information Technology lies in its acceptance by the target audience. Several behavioral models have been formulated to analyze factors that affect human decisions to accept new technology while some technology is already in place. These models enable us to identify the areas of concern within the system and its environment and to address them. However, these models are based in industrial settings, and are more suited to situations when a person is introduced to the field of Information Technology. A separate stream of research tries to model the factors that cause an Information System, especially at the workplace, to be termed a success. No such models exist for the academic community and the Computer Science student community, in particular. In this thesis, the success of a new academic meta-search system for the Computer Science student community is measured and the extent to which various factors affect this success is identified. For this purpose, an Information System success model is composed with the help of models for technology acceptance and Digital Library quality metrics. The resultant model is then used to formulate a survey instrument and the results of a user study with this instrument are used to begin to validate this model.