It is studied by eye-tracking how searchers explore metadata in book pages when selecting novels of varying interest levels. 30 participants searched interesting novels for four search tasks in two public library catalogs. The results showed that the associations of dwell time in book pages and in many metadata types, and novels' interest grading were non-linear. Most time was used for assessing a somewhat interesting novel compared to a non-interesting or very interesting one. Therefore, the binary classification of interest grading hides and over-emphasizes the contribution of "somewhat interesting" category in modeling interest by dwell time in book pages or metadata. Non-linear regression models showed that the explanatory power was greater in a three-level classification of interest grading compared to a binary classification.

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It is studied how users browse search results to find interesting novels for four search scenarios. It is evaluated in particular whether there are differences in search result page (SERP) browsing patterns and effectiveness between an enriched catalog for finding fiction compared to a traditional public library catalog. The data was collected from 30 participants by eye-tracking and questionnaires. The results indicate that the enriched catalog supported users to identify sooner and more effectively potentially clickable items on the results list compared to a traditional public library catalog. This is likely due to the more informative metadata in the enriched catalog like snippets of content description on the result list items. The discussion includes a theoretical and empirical comparison of findings in studies on fiction and non-fiction searching.