Next Generation Search/Discovery

Systems and User Searching

Behaviors

William H. Mischo, Michael A. Norman, Mary C. Schlembach

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

March 26, 2010

IACRL Meeting
Characteristics of Next Generation Systems
• Utilizes an operational OPAC (in background) to
extract holdings and availability information
• Support Web 2.0 social networking features –
tagging, RSS feeds, chat, tag clouds, user lists
• Journal article citations and links integrated in
results display
• Faceted results displays for search refinement and
reformulation.
Example Next Gen Systems
• Endeca (NCSU)
• Primo (Ex Libris)
• Aquabrowser (Bowker)
• Encore (III)
• WorldCat Local (OCLC)
• Summon (Serials Solution)
• Discovery (EBSCO)
• Blacklight (University of Virginia)
• VuFind (OS, Villanova)
• eXtensible Catalog (OS, Rochester)

• Issue of broadcast search vs. aggregated central

metadata search
University of Illinois Library Gateway
• Gateway Portal introduced in September 2007
o Guide users to appropriate information resources
o Recommender system
o Integration of resources
o Help with search strategy formulation and refinement

• Powered by metasearch system suite (Easy

Search)

• Metasearch over 70 targets

Easy Search Features

• Custom transaction logs: 4 million user search

arguments; 3+ million clickthroughs
• Analysis of search arguments, pattern checking
• Result displays influenced by search arguments
• AJAX driven display
• Links into the native interfaces at the point of
completed search
• NISO MXG support
Operational Search Assistance Functions
• Stopword removal and implicit Boolean insertion
• Spelling suggestions
• Suggested limiting to phrase and title word and
phrase searches
• Pattern matching for author search prompts
• Direct links to journal title matches
• Pre-Search lookup (and links) for frequently entered
terms, pathfinder topics (making entry form)
• Pattern matching for link to Journal & Article
Locator (full text article finder)
• Context sensitive arrangement of results
• Dark target searches in background
DLF 2008 Fall Forum
DLF 2008 Fall Forum
DLF 2008 Fall Forum
DLF 2008 Fall Forum
 
 User Studies
• Web searching behaviors
o Short search sessions (72% are single query)
o Average words per search query: 2.3 – 2.5
o “Advanced features” not utilized or not utilized
correctly
o Users typically look at first page of results only
• Search Assistance
• Users not using advanced search
features, so provide search suggestion
prompts to provide powerful
functionality
Easy Search Transaction Log Analysis
49.4% of the searches were “known-item” as opposed to
topical searches.

Of the 49.4% specific item searches:

• 7.4% of the 49.4% were author/title;
• 28.9% were author;
• 40.5% were book/monographic title searches;
• 6.8% were index/abstract title;
• 5.7% were for specific journal article; and
• 11.8% were for specific journal title
 
Overall, 17.96% of the searches contained a name or an
organization, although clearly some of these are topical searches.
Search Behaviors
Fall 2009 Sample Searches (697,504)

• 12.17% use Boolean operators (11.95% are AND, 0.18% OR,

0.1% NOT) – but almost all are “and” within title or other phrase

• 6.64% use Commas

• 0.89% use Parentheses

• 3.81% use Quotes

• 22.47% use Prepositions (useful for parsing out phrases and

identifying multiple concepts)

• 0.38% contain “+”

 
Search Behaviors
Fall 2009 Sample Searches (697,504)

• 40.15% of all searches are from the pull-down menu

within the previous search results page

• Search assistance suggestions (not including the

background “dark” searches) are made by the system
in:
• 47.77% of all sessions
• 35.95% of all searches

• 7.01% of searches are clicks on search suggestions or

are clicks on limit to exact phrase, title words, or title
phrase
 
Search Sessions
Fall 2009 Sample Searches (697,504)

• Total of 286,748 search sessions; with an average of 2.43

searches per session
• 50.15% of the sessions are single query (lower than web
search studies)
• 49.85% are 2 or more queries
• 27.4% are 3 or more queries
• 17.17% are 4 or more queries

• In 22.98% of sessions with more than one query, users clicked

on a search assistance suggestion.

 
Search Assistance
Fall 2009 Sample Searches (697,504)
• Within search sessions of greater than one query:
• 26.03% we present a spell change suggestion
• 9.8% of sessions users click on a spell change suggestion
• 8.69% system suggests an author search redo
• 2.1% users click on an author redo
• 27.04% system notes a match with a journal title
• 2.9% users click on journal title link (many users click on
ORR or SFX AtoZ result link)
• 11.9% system shows a direct resource link
• 7.76% users click on a direct link
• 64.32% system suggests exact phrase, title word, or title phrase
• 4.9% users click on one of these reduce matches link

 
Search Assistance Usage
Fall 2009 Sample Searches (697,504)

• Search reformulation using the results pull-down menu

• 8.97% of all searches are pull-down searches with a
change in the search field from the previous search
(that is, keyword to title or author; title to keyword or
author; author to keyword or title).
• These reformulation searches take place in 27.58% of
all search sessions with more than one query.

• The total percent of sessions where a user has clicked on

a search assistance suggestion (22.98%) or performed a
search reformulation from a pull-down menu (27.58%) is
then 46.74%.
 
Fall 2009 Easy Search – 4.037 Words per Query
Terms Number of Queries % of Total
1 18,845 11.4%
2 39,267 23.8%
3 39,095 23.7%
4 22,086 13.4%
5 13,814 8.4%
6 8,646 5.2%
7 5,506 3.3%
8 3,823 2.3%
>8 14,076 8.5%
Total: 165158 100%
 Clickthroughs Fall Semester 2009
Resource 2008 2009
Academic Search Premier 30.2% 22.5%
Voyager Online Catalog 24.9% 28.9%
Scopus 8.5% 8.3%
 
ISI Web of Knowledge 7.1% 8.1%
Academic OneFile 6.8% 5.9%
CARLI Statewide Catalog 7.1% 5.6%
Springer E-Books 3.1% 3.4%
E-Resource Lists 2.7% 2.9%
Google Books 1.7% 2.6%
Dark (background) targets 2.3%
Amazon 1.1% 0.7%
Google Scholar .9% 0.73%
Compendex 0.88%
Google 0.86%
Scirus 0.44%
Bing 0.23%
Business Source Complete 0.23%
What We Have Learned
• Large numbers of specific (known) item searches being
performed
• Users expect sophisticated parsing of their search
terms and automatic advanced processing (e.g.
truncation)
• Spell suggestions important
• Author and name searches must be parsed
• System is used as a Reference tool
• Search assistance in the form of system supplied
strategic suggestions and reformulated tactical
searching is being utilized in almost half of the search
sessions of more than one query.
 Future
• Guided search module – “Help Getting Started”
o encyclopedias, dissertations, e-books, popular journal
articles, etc
• Tailored (vertical) search modules
o NSDL STEM Education Site 
o Library and Information Science 
• Faceted result displays
• Return first 10 articles from selected targets to user 
• Merging of results  
• Agent approach (software agents that may e.g. return
answers rather than citations)
• Portability
o University of Illinois Springfield