Dana McKay

Book selection behavior in the physical library: implications for ebook collections

Little is known about how readers select books, whether they be print books or ebooks. In this paper we present a study of how people select physical books from academic library shelves. We use the insights gained into book selection behavior to make suggestions for the design of ebook-based digital libraries in order to better facilitate book selection behavior.

A jump to the left (and then a step to the right): reading practices within academic ebooks

Considerable attention has been paid to how readers find, triage, navigate and read periodical material such as journal articles. Until recently however, applying these questions to books has been impractical or impossible. This paper reports an exploratory log analysis of ebook usage in an academic library. This study investigates raw usage, document triage practices, and in-book navigation.

Judging a book by its cover: interface elements that affect reader selection of ebooks

Digital library research has demonstrated the impact of content presentation on both search and reading behaviours. In this paper, we scrutinise the influence of ebook presentation on user behaviour, focussing on document thumbnails and the first page view. We demonstrate that flaws in presentation increase the volume of short time-span reading, and reduce the likelihood of long-span reading when compared to other documents. This reflects other patterns of information seeking behaviour that demonstrate increased short-term reading when information content is uncertain, and suggests an ineffective use of reader time on less useful content.

Lend me some sugar: borrowing rates of neighbouring books as evidence for browsing

There is more to choosing a book than simply keyword searching. Browsing is a fundamental part of the information seeking process, and one that information seekers profess to value, though it has attracted little study. This dearth of research is undoubtedly in part because browsing is nebulous and difficult to quantify. In this paper we use a large circulation dataset from an academic library consortium to examine whether books in the library stacks are loaned in clusters, with a view firstly to confirming the existence of book browsing that has been reported anecdotally, and secondly to quantifying its impact on loan patterns.

An exploration of ebook selection behavior in academic library collections

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.

A lightweight metadata quality tool

We describe a Web-based metadata quality tool that provides statistical descriptions and visualisations of Dublin Core metadata harvested via the OAI protocol. The lightweight nature of development allows it to be used to gather contextualized requirements and some initial user feedback is discussed.

One of these things is not like the others: how users search different information resources

Transaction log analyses are common practice to understand user behavior in both online databases and library catalogues. While there has been significant work done in each of these domains, there is little work comparing user queries between library catalogues and online resources. In this paper we report on an exploratory comparison between searches performed via the same interface in three different search systems: a library catalogue, an online research database, and Google Scholar.

What's my name again?: sociotechnical considerations for author name management in research databases

Managing names in bibliographic databases so that they have a one-to-one match with individual authors is a longstanding and complex problem. Various solutions have been proposed, from labour-intensive but accurate manual matching, to machine-learning approaches to automated matching which require little input from people, but are not perfectly accurate. Researchers have a particular interest in name management: they are often authors, and receive academic credit based on their work and need correct citation records. However they are also searchers and have an interest in finding all the works by other authors. There has been little work on the tensions between these two needs, nor on how researchers manage their own identities with their choices of name. This paper reports on a study of researchers that investigates both their relationships with their own names, and what they would like from research databases when they are searching for specific authors.

Experiences in Deploying Metadata Analysis Tools for Institutional Repositories

Current institutional repository software provides few tools to help metadata librarians understand and analyze their collections. In this article, we compare and contrast metadata analysis tools that were developed simultaneously, but independently, at two New Zealand institutions during a period of national investment in research repositories: the Metadata Analysis Tool (MAT) at The University of Waikato, and the Kiwi Research Information Service (KRIS) at the National Library of New Zealand. The tools have many similarities: they are convenient, online, on-demand services that harvest metadata using OAI-PMH; they were developed in response to feedback from repository administrators; and they both help pinpoint specific metadata errors as well as generating summary statistics. They also have significant differences: one is a dedicated tool wheres the other is part of a wider access tool; one gives a holistic view of the metadata whereas the other looks for specific problems; one seeks patterns in the data values whereas the other checks that those values conform to metadata standards. Both tools work in a complementary manner to existing Web-based administration tools. We have observed that discovery and correction of metadata errors can be quickly achieved by switching Web browser views from the analysis tool to the repository interface, and back. We summarize the findings from both tools’ deployment into a checklist of requirements for metadata analysis tools.

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

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.