Anne Gambles, HeadLine Project Officer
First Published: February, 2000; Updated: November 2000
The demonstration below builds upon the "Basic Idea" for the HeadLine Personal Information Environment (PIE) that was put forward by Simon McLeish and Laura Johnson in March, 1999. This demonstration scenario is an example of what we think a 'typical' student user session might involve. Pete the student uses the PIE to add a new resource to his page and then to search for information for a forthcoming assignment.
Here follows a walk through a typical user's session in their PIE. To access the pages that Pete visits you will need to click on the links. You will need to press your browser's back button to return to this page.
Pete is an undergraduate student in the Economics Department at the LSE and is studying course E101.
Pete enters his PIE by logging in using the HeadLine PIE Authentication screen. He inputs his user name and password - in the case of LSE this will be his network username and password. He clicks on "Access the PIE" and his default page: "Pete's page" is displayed. The top section of the PIE details the name of the page, the key to the buttons on the lower right hand side of the page, and the "Help", "Customise" and "Exit" functions. The left-side of each page within the PIE contains links to the other pages that the user can access. The right side of the page includes the collections that Pete has defined and the resources that Pete has chosen to add to these collections. It is possible to expand and collapse the collections using the small square icon to the right of each collection heading.
Pete decides to go to the "All Resources page". There is a link to this page in the left hand column of the screen. The All Resources page is a listing of all the Library resources and services that Pete is entitled to use. The All Resources page acts as a source page from which Pete can take items and add them to his page - Pete's Page. The All resources page includes an A-Z listing of all library resources and it also includes a subject classification listing under which resources have been classified and grouped by subject.
Pete notices that an important economics journal (Economics Systems Research) has recently been added to the All Resources page. Pete is an Economics student, he decides to add this journal to "Pete's Page" because it looks like it could be useful for this weeks essay. He clicks on the small arrow to the right of this journal title which then becomes "greyed out". This economics journal will have been added to the "New resources" list on Pete's Page. Pete wants this journal to appear under his "This week's essay" list. He clicks on "Customise" at the top right of the All Resources page.
The PIE Customisation screen reminds Pete that he can not edit the All Resources page. Pete scrolls down the Customisation screen (using the scroll-bar on the right) and finds the "New Resources" section. The journal: Economics Systems Research has been added to this section. Pete has a choice, he can either add this journal to "Pete's Page" or to the "Autumn term work page" (this is a page that Pete created some time ago - he can customise this one too), or to both of these pages. Pete decides to add the journal to "Pete's page", and checks the box next to the list: "This week's essay". He then clicks the "Confirm Edit" button. This returns him to "Pete's Page" - the page that has just been configured. Pete scrolls down "Pete's Page" and sees that Economics Systems Research has indeed been added to the "This week's essay" list.
Pete decides to do some research for his essay. He types: 'Japan and emerging markets' into the search box (left side of the screen), checks the boxes for "Unicorn", "Decomate: articles at LSE", "ABI/Inform", "lecture notes", "Journal of Economics Systems Research" and SOSIG. He then clicks the "Search" button. Pete is presented with the Search Results. Pete then clicks on the Unicorn link and is taken futher down the page to the collaped list - which he then expands (by clicking on the "expand/collapse" button) to view the individual hit. Unicorn has found one book that is relevant to Pete's search. Pete wishes to have a look at this book. He clicks on the classmark link: HG7867.87* and is taken to Sherloc (the shelfmark and resource locator) where he is shown where abouts in the BLPES the book is located. Pete makes a note of where the book is located and returns to the PIE by clicking on the previous browser window (SearchResults2.html).
Pete now wishes to have a look at the articles that were found in Decomate. He expands the Decomate list by clicking on the "expand/collapse" button. The two hits are displayed. Pete choses to view the second article in the Decomate results list. He clicks on the link and the article is delivered to him as a .pdf (portable document format) document in a new browser window.
Pete decides to exit from the PIE, he clicks on the previous browser window (SearchResults3.html) and then clicks on the Exit link. Pete is logged out of the PIE and is shown the Exit screen.