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The Things We Talk About When We Talk About Browsing: An Empirical Typology of Library Browsing Behavior
Author(s) -
McKay Dana,
Chang Shanton,
Smith Wally,
Buchanan George
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.903
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 2330-1643
pISSN - 2330-1635
DOI - 10.1002/asi.24200
Subject(s) - typology , computer science , world wide web , set (abstract data type) , web navigation , interface (matter) , rendering (computer graphics) , information seeking , digital library , the internet , human–computer interaction , information retrieval , sociology , anthropology , art , computer graphics (images) , poetry , literature , bubble , maximum bubble pressure method , parallel computing , programming language
Libraries increasingly offer much of their collection online, rendering it invisible or unavailable to readers who, for reasons of information experience, prefer to browse the shelves. Although the evidence that shelf browsing is an important part of information behavior is increasing, information browsing as a behavior is somewhat of a black box (in contrast to web browsing, which is relatively well understood). It seems likely from early work that browsing is not, in fact, a monolithic behavior, but rather a set of behaviors and goals. The typologies presented in these works, however, are of a too high level to offer much insight into what support is needed for successful online browsing. In contrast, a recent spate of speculative browsing technologies meet some browsing needs, but offer little theoretical understanding of how systems support browsing. The major contribution of this article is a new typology of library browsing behavior based on recent observations of browsing behavior in libraries. The secondary contribution is an understanding of the interface features that would support these types of information browsers in an online environment.