{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,5,4]],"date-time":"2026-05-04T00:26:20Z","timestamp":1777854380469,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":26,"publisher":"SAGE Publications","issue":"6","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2003,11,1]],"date-time":"2003-11-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1067644800000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/page\/policies\/text-and-data-mining-license"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Journal of Information Science"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2003,11]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>A digital service, like a web site, may contain a lot of information but we often do not know if it is used, relevant or valuable. Transaction log files generated by digital information services do record the pages (topics or content) viewed by users and this is perhaps the most interesting aspect of the logs. However, analysing these pages poses plenty of problems for researchers, especially when comparing content coverage of various related services. It is quite normal, even for digital services of the same organization, to adopt different page naming conventions for each service. This is even truer about digital services run by different organizations. What all this means is that there is no easy way to compare topic use as revealed by access behaviour. This paper looks at the problems of describing and comparing the content usage of digital information services, covering three digital platforms operating in the health field. This paper discusses problems posed in making health content comparisons based on page names listed in the transaction log files and between very large data sets. It reviews the impact that system architecture might have as well as the time the service has been available online and the impact due to outlet differences. However, the main focus of the article is a comparison of five sources of health information through their log files. It makes use of cluster analysis and applies procedures normally used to define species diversity to research content coverage. In all, two million page views were analysed, covering more than 5000 unique health pages.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/0165551503296007","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2004,5,27]],"date-time":"2004-05-27T11:59:35Z","timestamp":1085659175000},"page":"499-515","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":6,"title":["Assessing used content across five digital health information services using                transaction log files"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"29","author":[{"given":"David","family":"Nicholas","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Paul","family":"Huntington","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Janet","family":"Homewood","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Ciber, Department of Information Science, City University, London, UK"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2003,11,1]]},"reference":[{"key":"atypb1","unstructured":"[1] Department of Health,The Web, the kiosk, digital TV and the changing and evolving face of consumer health information provision: a national impact study, 2000\u2013 2003."},{"key":"atypb2","unstructured":"[2] Department of Health, An evaluation of pilot projects exploring the health applications of digital interactive television, 2001\u20132002."},{"key":"atypb3","unstructured":"[3] News International, Web log analysis: case study newspapers, 1998\u20131999."},{"key":"atypb4","unstructured":"[4] The Ingenta Institute, Digital journals \u2013 site licensing, library consortia deals and journal use statistics, 2002."},{"key":"atypb5","unstructured":"[5] N. Govert, M. Lalmas and N. Fuhr, A probabilistic description-oriented approach for categorizing web documents , Conference on Information and Knowledge Management Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management, Kansas City, MO, 1999. Available at: www.pewinternet.org\/reports\/reports.asp? Report 1\/4 26&Section 1\/4 &Field 1\/4 ReportLevel2 Level2ID&ID 1\/4 134"},{"key":"atypb6","unstructured":"[6] S. Oates and R. Gibson (2003) ECPR 2003 Workshop: the Changing Media and Civil Society. Available at: www.essex.ac.uk\/ecpr\/jointsessions\/edinburgh\/details\/ws%2020.pdf (access date 7 February 2003)."},{"key":"atypb7","unstructured":"[7] P. Burden, Cataloguing and the Internet. Available at: www.scit.wlv.ac.uk\/wwlib\/docs\/thoughts.html (access date 13 May 2003)."},{"key":"atypb8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"[8] D. Vizine-Goetz, Classification schemes for internet resources revisited , Journal of Internet Cataloging 5(4) (2003). Available at: http:\/\/haworthpressinc.com\/store\/toc\/htmvJ141v05n04_TOC.htm (access date 13 May 2003).","DOI":"10.1300\/J141v05n04_02"},{"key":"atypb9","unstructured":"[9] A. Ardo\u00ae and T. Koch, Creation and automatic classification of a robot-generated subject index. The Fourth ACM Conference on Digital Libraries, Berkeley, CA , 11\u201314 August 1999. Available at: www.lub.lu.se\/desire\/poster.html (access date 13 May 2003)."},{"key":"atypb10","unstructured":"[10] A. Geyer-Schulz and M. Hahsler, Automatic Labelling of References for InternetInformation Systems. Available at: wwwai.wu-wien.ac.at\/*hahsler\/research\/labeling_gfkl1999\/paper\/labelling.pdf (access date 13 May 2003)."},{"key":"atypb11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"[11] P. Kim, T. Eng, M. Deering and A. Maxfield, Published criteria for evaluating health related web sites: review , British Medical Journal 318 (1999) 647\u2013649 .","DOI":"10.1136\/bmj.318.7184.647"},{"key":"atypb12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1136\/bmj.321.7275.1511"},{"key":"atypb13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"[13] W.M. Silberg, G.D. Lundberg and R.A. Musacchio, Assessing, controlling and assuring the quality of medical information on the Internet , JAMA 277 (1997) 1244\u20131245 .","DOI":"10.1001\/jama.277.15.1244"},{"key":"atypb14","unstructured":"[14] A. Coulter, V. Entwistle and D. Gilbert, Informing Patients: an assessment of the quality of patient information materials ( The King\u2019s Fund, London , 1999)"},{"key":"atypb15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1108\/EUM0000000006973"},{"key":"atypb16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"[16] D. Nicholas and P. Huntington, Micro-mining and segmented log file analysis: a method for enriching the data yield from Internet log files , Journal of Information Science 29 (2003) (in press).","DOI":"10.1177\/01655515030295005"},{"key":"atypb17","unstructured":"[17] Department of Health, The Web, the kiosk, digital TV and the changing and evolving face of consumer health information provision: a national impact study, 2000\u2013 2003."},{"key":"atypb18","unstructured":"[18] Department of Health, An evaluation of pilot projects exploring the health applications of digital interactive television, 2001\u20132002."},{"key":"atypb19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"[19] P. Huntington, D. Nicholas, P. Williams and B. Gunter, Comparing two digital consumer health television services using transaction log analysis , Informatics in Primary Care 10(3) (2002) 147-147 .","DOI":"10.14236\/jhi.v10i3.250"},{"key":"atypb20","unstructured":"[20] D. Nicholas and P. Huntington, Log run trends in log analysis, a 12 month study of logs from a major health site (submitted)."},{"key":"atypb21","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1108\/00012530210452573"},{"key":"atypb22","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1108\/EUM0000000007025"},{"key":"atypb23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/016555150202800107"},{"key":"atypb24","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1108\/00012530210443311"},{"key":"atypb25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"[25] D. Nicholas, P. Huntington, P. Williams and B. Gunter, \u2018Search-disclosure\u2019: understanding digital information platform preference and location in a health environment , Journal of Documentation 59(5) (2003) (in press).","DOI":"10.1108\/00220410310499573"},{"key":"atypb26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"[26] D. Nicholas, P. Huntington, P. Williams and B. Gunter, First Steps Towards Providing the Nation with Health Care Advice and Information Via Their Television Sets: an Evaluation of Pilot Projects Exploring the Health Applications of Digital Interactive Television ( City University, London , 2002). 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