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What makes a good online dictionary? Empirical insights from an interdisciplinary research project
(2011)
This paper presents empirical fmdings from two online surveys on the use of online dictionaries, in which more than 1,000 participants took part. The aim of these studies was to clarify general questions of online dictionary use (e.g. which electronic devices are used for online dictionaries or different types of usage situations) and to identify different demands regarding the use of online dictionaries. We will present some important results ofthis ongoing research project by focusing on the latter. Our analyses show that neither knowledge of the participants’ (scientific or academic) background, nor the language Version of the online survey (German vs. English) allow any significant conclusions to be drawn about the participant’s individual user demands. Subgroup analyses only reveal noteworthy differences when the groups are clustered statistically. Taken together, our fmdings shed light on the general lexicographical request both for the development of a user-adaptive interface and the incorporation of multimedia elements to make online dictionaries more user-friendly and innovative.
In this paper, we present the concept and the results of two studies addressing (potential) users of monolingual German online dictionaries, such as www.elexiko.de. Drawing on the example of elexiko, the aim of those studies was to collect empirical data on possible extensions of the content of monolingual online dictionaries, e.g. the search function, to evaluate how users comprehend the terminology of the user interface, to find out which types of information are expected to be included in each specific lexicographic module and to investigate general questions regarding the function and reception of examples illustrating the use of a word. The design and distribution of the surveys is comparable to the studies described in the chapters 5-8 of this volume. We also explain, how the data obtained in our studies were used for further improvement of the elexiko-dictionary.