The Use of OPAC in a Large Academic Library: a transactional log
analysis of subject searching
The Journal of the Academic Librarianship, (05/2007 2007)DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2007.01.018
Abstract
<p>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.</p>