Survey on high-level search activities based on the stratagem level in digital libraries

Abstract

High-level search activities for Digital Libraries (DLs) introduced by Fuhr et al. [8] go beyond basic query searches because they include targeted and structured searches like e.g. a journal run or citation searching. In this paper, we investigate if and how typical highlevel search activities are really used in current DLs. We conducted an online survey with 129 participating researchers from different fields of study that aims at getting a quantitative view on the usage of high level search activities in DLs. Although our results indicate the usefulness of high-level search activities, they are not well supported by modern DLs with regards to the users’ state of search, e.g. looking at a relevant or not relevant document. Furthermore, we identified differences in the information seeking behavior across the respondents. Respondents with a higher academic degree significantly considered journals and conference proceedings as more useful than respondents with a lower academic degree.