Do they use and understand it?
What I can tell you from looking at the statistics: yes and no. The advanced users that enable the search information make heavy use on it. Others don’t realize this (and other) features at all.
Since it is very seldom that a source does not respond within two seconds, it is also not that important.

Greetings from Switzerland
Stephan

One of your correspondents criticized the user friendliness of the feature by which early hits on WorldWideScience.org or Science.gov are posted and then, later, the user can update the hit list with the late arrivals.

Your response talked about the ubiquity of computer-based tools that require training to use, thus implying that it is OK for WorldWideScience and other federated search products to require training to use.

In my view, a better response would make the point that yes, the two-step hit list is different than Google, but it is nevertheless intuitive and does not require training. What OSTI seeks to do is to make all its products intuitive. We consider ourselves to have failed if users need to take a training course to use one of our products. While Google is simple to use, and we emulate that simplicity whenever we can, we think we have achieved our purpose if our applications are intuitive, whether or not they follow the Google model. We think the two-step hit list achieves our purpose by being intuitive. This is a general principle that needs to be advanced on your blog: it is essential for applications to be intuitive, which may or may not mean that they are Google-like in their architecture.

Walter L. Warnick, Ph.D.
Director, OSTI