From physical to digital: a case study of computer scientists’ behaviour in physical libraries

Stelmaszewska, Hanna; Blandford, Ann

doi:10.1007/s00799-003-0072-6

Cited by 49 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 29 publications

(34 reference statements)

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“…The EBL system provides readers with instant access to a navigation panel to the left of the book that, for most books, displays some kind of ToC. The ToC is seen to be useful in decision-making in print books [2,8,10,23,25], print articles [17] and ebooks [2,10,15]. Readers in our study used the interactive ToC in the left-hand panel relatively frequently (62% of all readers), suggesting that many at the very least saw this panel.…”

Section: Document Selectionmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…Stelmaszweska et al's work [23] following computer scientists is the earliest published work based on observation of adults selecting books in a library. This study demonstrated that while these readers did use book content to guide their decision to some extent, they also looked at the book covers to determine books' ages and assessed the amount of dust on books to determine whether they had been recently used.…”

Section: Book Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Exploration of ebook Selection Behavior in Academic Library Collections

McKay

Hinze

Heese

et al. 2012

Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries

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Abstract. Academic libraries have offered ebooks for some time, however little is known about how readers interact with them while making relevance decisions. In this paper we seek to address that gap by analyzing ebook transaction logs for books in a university library.Keywords: ebooks, log analysis, book selection, HCI, information behavior IntroductionConsider the process of borrowing a book from a library (digital or physical): the reader searches or browses the collection to identify candidate books that are potentially relevant; they each candidate book to assess its actual relevance; and they borrow those books deemed relevant to explore them more depth at a later date. Of course, finding a useful book is rarely so straightforward: these stages may be sequential or interleaved. In this paper, we consider a specific aspect of this process: the examination of a candidate book after the candidate has been identified in the library collection; we focus specifically on ebooks. How a reader explores physical books when making relevance decisions-which parts of books are viewed, how quickly, in what orderhas been relatively neglected [8], likely because such a study in a physical domain would be intrusive and 'creepy' [16]. To our knowledge this aspect of ebook selection has also not been explored, surprisingly, given that the availability of ebook transaction logs allows such a study to be conducted post hoc so as to avoid disturbing the experience of those using an ebook collection. This paper describes exactly such a study based on the transaction logs of a university library ebook collection.In Section 2 of this paper we explore the previous research on ebook usage and book selection (both physical and electronic); in Section 3 we describe the ebook collection on which our study is based and gives details of the log sample we analyzed. Section 4 presents the results of our analysis, including which parts of the

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Section: Document Selectionmentioning

confidence: 76%

Section: Book Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Exploration of ebook Selection Behavior in Academic Library Collections

McKay

Hinze

Heese

et al. 2012

Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries

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“…Key models of information seeking include elements that focus on browsing and exploration [3,4]. The literature on book seeking also shows that readers consider browsing an important part of book seeking [1,5,6]. Readers in both academic [5,7] and public [8] libraries note lack of browsing support as a reason for avoiding the use of ebooks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our prior work [9] leveraged two established digital library techniques-examining physical libraries [1,6,7] and transaction log analysis [10,11]-to determine whether physical layout of library shelves affects book borrowing patterns. In that work we specifically examined whether proximity to a loaned book increases the chance a book will itself be loaned: we found a strongly significant increase in this likelihood that we termed the neighbour effect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper refines the neighbour effect by examining day-of-week variance, the distance between relatively nearby books borrowed on the same day (co-borrowed books), the impact of topic boundaries, and the distance between co-borrowed books in search results. Given the prevalence of complaints about digital library browsing systems [1,6,12], developing a better understanding of browsing in is a vital step to improving users' experience of DLs. This paper thus aims to increase and improve our understanding of browsing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tyranny of Distance: Understanding Academic Library Browsing by Refining the Neighbour Effect

McKay

Buchanan

Chang

2015

Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries

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Browsing is a part of book seeking that is important to readers, poorly understood, and ill supported in digital libraries. In earlier work, we attempted to understand the impact of browsing on book borrowing by examining whether books near other loaned books were more likely to be loaned themselves, a phenomenon we termed the neighbour effect. In this paper we further examine the neighbour effect, looking specifically at size, interaction with search and topic boundaries, increasing our understanding of browsing behaviour.

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A library or just another information resource? A case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries

Makri

Blandford

Gow

et al. 2006

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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A user's understanding of the libraries they work in, andhence of what they can do in those libraries, is encapsulated in their "mental models" of those libraries. In this article, we present a focused case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries based on observations and interviews with eight participants. It was found that a poor understanding of access restrictions led to risk-averse behavior, whereas a poor understanding of search algorithms and relevance ranking resulted in trial-and-error behavior. This highlights the importance of rich feedback in helping users to construct useful mental models. Although the use of concrete analogies for digital libraries was not widespread, participants used their knowledge of Internet search engines to infer how searching might work in digital libraries. Indeed, most participants did not clearly distinguish between different kinds of digital resource, viewing the electronic library catalogue, abstracting services, digital libraries, and Internet search engines as variants on a theme.

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From physical to digital: a case study of computer scientists’ behaviour in physical libraries

Cited by 49 publications

References 29 publications

An Exploration of ebook Selection Behavior in Academic Library Collections

An Exploration of ebook Selection Behavior in Academic Library Collections

Tyranny of Distance: Understanding Academic Library Browsing by Refining the Neighbour Effect

A library or just another information resource? A case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries

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