Search Strategies of Library Search Experts
This research addresses the challenge of complex, open-ended search needs for information professionals, but it is incremental as it focuses on qualitative analysis without introducing new methods.
The study analyzed how library and museum information professionals approach search tasks of varying complexity under time pressure, finding that their strategies differ significantly from standard search engine use.
Search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing are an excellent support for finding documents, but this strength also imposes a limitation. As they are optimized for document retrieval tasks, they perform less well when it comes to more complex search needs. Complex search tasks are usually described as open-ended, abstract and poorly defined information needs with a multifaceted character. In this paper we will present the results of an experiment carried out with information professionals from libraries and museums in the course of a search contest. The aim of the experiment was to analyze the search strategies of experienced information workers trying to tackle search tasks of varying complexity and get qualitative results on the impact of time pressure on such an experiment.