Enforcement of information seeking behavior through digital library services Leonidas Papachristopoulos Library and Information Center, University of Patras, Greece. leonidasp@upatras.gr Giannis Tsakonas Library and Information Center, University of Patras, Greece Laboratory on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing, Department of Archives and Library Sciences, Ionian University, Greece. john@lis.upatras.gr, gtsak@ionio.gr Christos Papatheodorou Laboratory on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing, Department of Archives and Library Sciences, Ionian University, Greece. papatheodor@ionio.gr 1 Postal address: Library and Information Center, University of Patras, 26504, Rio, Patras, Greece 2 Postal address: Laboratory on Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing, Department of Archives and Library Sciences, Ionian University, Ioannou Theotoki 72, 49100, Corfu, Greece. Abstract: Digital library are complex information systems, comprised by core and value added services. The current study attempts to collect through a qualitative approach users’ opinions about the usage, usefulness and usability of DL value added services. Selected value added services from four DLs are related to the main stages of information life-cycle in order to identify crucial areas of DL interaction. The results show a major concentration of services in stages that address information searching needs and that the most significant factors affecting acceptance reside on three levels of factors, namely system, services and individual’s factors. Key Words: Information seeking, Qualitative evaluation, Value-added services, Services modeling, Information behavior. 1.0. Introduction Many researchers have made several attempts to clarify the meaning of the term value and to connect it with other concepts, such as satisfaction and customer’s behavior (Ball, Coelho & Vilares, 2006). Value is regarded as the overall assessment of the utility of a product based on the perceptions of what is given and received (Ho & Cheng, 1999). In addition Value Added Services (VAS) are considered the advanced and/or additional services that a provider offers to enhance a product through unique characteristics, to increase user experience and to satisfy advanced user requirements. This study attempts to deepen in the concept of services in the digital libraries (DLs) area. We try to allocate which are the most significant services from a large set found in four DLs, which affect the users’ behavior in various phases of information flow and which are the factors that create the sense of value. The motivation of this study lies in pursue of understanding users’ views of popular and innovative DL services and enable designers’ comprehension on this subtle issue. 2.0. Background According to Fox (1993) services are all the computational, warehousing and communication mechanisms that exceed the capabilities of DL in relation to the traditional library services. Previous DL evaluation studies focused on specific aspects of their operation, like performance or usability (Kengeri et al., 1999; Rusch-Feja & Siebeky, 1999), but few have concentrated on value added services. Other researchers surveyed extensively the various information retrieval (IR) features (Smith, 2000; Meyyappan, Chowdhury & Foo, 2000). Chowdhury & Chowdhury (2000) have categorized IR features of twenty DLs in two main classes, browsing and search functionalities, and search output. From their study it was evident that DLs do not address only issues of IR, based on the solid tradition of IR and database retrieval, but they extend their