The Use of OPAC in a Large Academic Library: A Transactional Log Analysis Study of Subject Searching

• Published in: The Journal of academic librarianship Vol. 33; no. 3; pp. 327 - 337
• Main Authors: Villén-Rueda, Luis, Senso, Jose A., de Moya-Anegón, Félix
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY Elsevier Inc 01.05.2007; Elsevier; Elsevier Science; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Academic Libraries; Colleges & universities; Exact sciences and technology; Indexing; Information and communication sciences; Information processing and retrieval; Information retrieval. Man machine relationship; Information science. Documentation; Information Seeking; Internet; Library cataloging; Online catalogues; Online Searching; Research Libraries; Research process. Evaluation; Sciences and techniques of general use; Search strategies; Searches; Transaction log analysis; Users (Information); User study; Higher education library; Use study; Log file; Searching behavior; User behavior; Automated catalog
• ISSN: 0099-1333; 1879-1999
• DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2007.01.018

The analysis of user searches in catalogs has been the topic of research for over four decades, involving numerous studies and diverse methodologies. The present study looks at how different types of users effect queries in the catalog of a university library. For this purpose, we analyzed log files to determine which was the most frequent type of search conducted among different user types. Results show that searches by browsing are similar in frequency to the analytical queries, and that only 14 percent of queries actually specify the subject heading.