Inproceedings,
Understanding the information needs of web archive users
Proceedings of the 10th International Web Archiving Workshop, 9, page 6. (2010)
Abstract
A complete characterization of web archive users must respond to three questions: why, what and how do users search? This study focuses on the first two: what are the user intents and which topics are most interesting to them? Answers to these questions are essential for guiding the development of web archives towards better user satisfaction. We used three instruments to collect quantitative and qualitative data, namely, search logs, an online questionnaire and a laboratory study. The obtained results are coincident. Users perform mostly navigational searches and do not restrict searches by date. Other findings show that users prefer full-text over URL search and the oldest documents over the newest. We discuss all these findings and their implications in the design of search engines for web archives.
