This paper aims to report the result of follow‐up research on end‐users' conceptions of information visibility on the web and their conceptualizations of success and failure in web searching.
The data were collected by a questionnaire followed by a brief interview with the participants. The questionnaire was developed based on the information visibility model suggested by the author in the original study. Fifty‐two library and information sciences students from Tarbiat Mollem University (TMU) and Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS) in Tehran took part in the study.
The model of information visibility can enable web users to gain a better understanding of their information seeking (IS) outcomes and it can assist them to improve their information literacy skills. The model can provide a theoretical framework to investigate web users' IS behavior and can be used as a diagnostic tool to explore the contextual and conceptual elements affecting the visibility of information for end‐users.
The paper suggests a visibility learning diary (VLD), which might be useful to measure the efficiency of information literacy training courses.
The contextual and conceptual approach of the paper provides a deeper insight into the issue of information visibility, which has received little attention by IS and information retrieval researchers until now.
