This presentation describes the work reported in Clough et al. (2017): Europeana: What Users Search For and Why in TPDL 2017. It analysed the search tasks carried out by 240 Europeana users, and categorised the subject content of the search requests. Users' motivation of searching is also analysed in this study.
1. Europeana:
WhatUsersSearch for andWhy
Paul Clough1,Timothy Hill2, Monica Lestari Paramita1, and Paula Goodale1
1 University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK
2 Europeana,The Hague, Netherlands
2. Introduction
Users from diverse backgrounds are coming to
cultural heritage websites and information
services with increasingly varied goals, tasks and
information needs (Skov & Ingwersen, 2008).
Having a better understanding of the users, their
goals and tasks, can help inform the design of
more effective information systems.
The aim of this study is to investigate:
the broad type of search tasks
the subject content of searches
motives for searching and uses of the information
found
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5. RelatedWork
Information
needs in cultural
heritage
Information seeking behaviours of cultural
heritage experts were studied in Amin et al.
(2008).
A majority of search tasks were complex information
gathering (e.g., finding information to compare
similarities and differences between objects).
Meanwhile, Skov (2013) found that casual users
(e.g., general museum visitors) often have different
(and less-complex) information needs
They often search for well-defined known items, and
do fewer exploratory tasks.
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6. RelatedWork
Europeana
users
Previous surveys/studies carried out in Europeana
have also identified two distinct user types,
referred to as “culture vultures” and “culture
snackers”.
The “culture vultures” are dedicated enthusiasts
and professionals:
They have domain expertise and likely lifelong
enthusiasts of cultural heritage.
The “culture snackers” are more representative of
the novice or general user:
They come with lower levels of technical/domain
expertise and typically engage for general interest.
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7. Methodology
We designed a pop-up web survey in order to
gather responses from actual Europeana users as
they carried out their search activities.
We proposed a scheme for categorising the search
tasks and information use in Europeana.
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8. Pop-upSurvey
Questions
(1/2)
1. How often do you visit Europeana?
2. How would you identify yourself?
3. How did you get to Europeana today?
4. What information are you looking for right now?
5. Why are you looking for this information?
6. After finding this information, you will: _______
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9. Pop-upSurvey
Questions
• (e.g. “I want to find an image of the Mona Lisa”, “I’m
trying to explore what’s available in Europeana on World
War I”, “I am looking for photographs of Sheffield in the
1980s”, “I am looking for artworks by Leonardo daVinci”,
or “Don’t know or nothing specific”)
Q4: “What information are you looking for?”
• (e.g., “To create a presentation for my student class”, “To
write an article”, “To help plan a visit toTurin and want to
know about artworks to visit whilst there”, “To learn
about the history of English folk music”, “General interest
/ no specific reason”)
Q5: “Why are you looking for this information?”
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10. Pop-upSurvey
Questions
(2/2)
7. How would you rate your level of subject knowledge
for your current activity?
8. For your current activity, please rate the importance
of the following Europeana functionalities: _______
9. What other features could be added / improved to
help you complete your current activity?
10. If you have any other comments about Europeana:
_______
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12. 12
The pop-up survey ran
for 2 weeks (21 March –
4 April 2017)
240 users of Europeana
from 48 different
countries
48.8% participants came
directly to the site,
34.2% arrived via a
search engine link, and
10.8% via social media
link and a teaching
resources link
14. Q4:“Whatinformationareyoulookingforrightnow?”
Mean=10.1 words (min=1, max=49)
I am trying to explore images of
objects and monuments from ancient
Italy and the Roman Empire.
I am looking for the
1919 film "Les fetes de
la victoire".
I'm looking for traces of
Russian émigrés from 1917
to the 1930s : art,
photographs, or maps.
I´m trying to find
reusable patterns to
use in a fabric
screenprinting project.
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15. Q5:“Whyareyoulookingforthisinformation?”
Mean=8.3 words (min=1, max=72)
To write a book.I want to use the excerpt to
illustrate a university lecture.
I am going to attend a
course in screenprinting
this autumn and need to
prepare some ideas.To help plan an exhibition for
an International summit.
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17. Analysis of the
Search
Requests
We performed two different categorisations:
1. Categorisation based on search tasks
2. Categorisation based on mode/facet analysis
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18. SearchTasks Definitions Examples
Specific-item search Search for specific item (i.e., known-
item) typically expressed precisely
“I am looking for the 1919 film ‘Les
fetes de la victorie’.”
By named author Search for information by a specific
named author or provider
“to look for paintings by Henriette
Ronner”, “I am searching for …
artifacts from the Regional
Archaeological Museum Plovdiv”
Specific-subject search Find information for specified (or
named) subject (i.e., person, place,
location, etc.) forming the main
subject of the request
“I am looking for pictures of
Stuttgart”
General topical search Find information for general subject “Italian medieval illuminations”,
“Looking at examples of art made
by women”
Browsing or exploring Used to identify searches where the
user has no specific goal
“I am just browsing your
collections”
Ambiguous or unclear The search request is unclear or
difficult to determine category
“I am anOpera lover”, “book”
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20. Categorisation
Based on
Mode/Facet
Analysis
Armitage and Enser (1996): analysing the
subject content of user requests for still
and moving visual images.
Panofsky-Shatford’s modes of image
analysis in the form of mode/facet
analysis.
Who, What, Where and When
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22. Specific General
Person/group E.g., “Saint Francis of Assisi” E.g., “working women”, “historical figure”
Object/thing E.g., “Prelude, Op. 28, No. 7, by
Frederic Chopin”
E.g., “paintings”
Location E.g., “Spain”, “Norfolk” E.g., “public places”
Event/action E.g., “Great War”, “black death” E.g., “working”, “privatisation of school system”
Time E.g., “1940”, “XIX century” E.g., “medieval”
General subject E.g., “art”, “history”
Creator E.g., “paintings byVan Gogh”
Provider E.g., “I am searching for images from the Regional Archeological Museum Plovdiv.”
Nationality E.g., “Icelandic artworks”
Language E.g., “books written in Italian”
Availability E.g., “free open-source 3d models”
Response E.g., “looking for a nice painting”
Medium E.g., “image”, “video”, “text”
AdditionalCodesPanofsky-ShatfordCodes
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26. Example (2/3)
“I’m looking for GreatWar
photographs taken on
exactly 100 years ago”
Specific event
Specific time
Medium
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27. Example (3/3)
“I am looking for images
of cats in art or culture to
post about on my blog -
but they must be in the
public domain as I am
scrupulous about image
rights”
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28. Example (3/3)
“I am looking for images
of cats in art or culture to
post about on my blog -
but they must be in the
public domain as I am
scrupulous about image
rights”
Medium
General
object/thing
Availability
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30. Categorisation
Based on
Mode/Facet
Analysis
The most common combinations are:
“Creator + Specific object/thing”
(9 occurrences)
E.g. “I want to find some information about a
painting ofWillem van de Helde: ‘Het kanonschot’”
“Creator + General object/thing”
(8 occurrences)
E.g. “I am looking for artworks by Leonardo da
Vinci”
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32. Categorisation
of Motives and
Uses
We created a new scheme to categorise the
information use for Europeana:
To create a new work
Professional activity
This category captures the activity of academics
and CH professionals where the focus is purely
research or monitoring oriented, and no precise
output from the search is anticipated
Personal interest
Teaching
Other
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34. Categorisation
of Motives and
Use:
“Create new
work” (37.1%)
Task-closure:
83.9% were involved in “open-ended” tasks (e.g.
scholarly research”), 14.9% in “closed” tasks.
Modification:
36.8% represent “unmediated” cases, i.e. the
information found will be used without
modification (e.g., to illustrate a presentation), and
57.5% are “remediated” cases.
Type of output:
64.4% would be textual in form (e.g., academic
article), 6.9% in a visual form, 3.4% in audiovisual
form
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36. Conclusion
and Future
Work
We have investigated the type of searches conducted on
Europeana and common uses of the information found.
We have proposed a scheme for categorising search tasks
and information use in the cultural heritage domain.
These results help better understand search tasks more
generally in cultural heritage across a wider range of users.
Future work is planned to further validate the
categorisation scheme and conduct a deeper analysis of the
current dataset.
We also plan to gain deeper insights into aspects of users’
search activity using data derived from other sources (e.g.,
search logs, and diary studies).
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37. Acknowledgments
This study was funded
by the European
Commission under
‘Europeana DSI-2’.
We thank Europeana
users for participating
in the online survey.
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38. Thank you
Dataset available for download from:
http://bit.ly/europeanaSearchTasks
https://doi.org/10.15131/shef.data.5411194
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Editor's Notes
Cultural Heritage Domain:
- Broad type of search tasks: known-items, general topics, browse/explore?
- Subject content of search: location? Person/group? Item? Search by providers?
Talk about Europeana – 54 million items, aggregates item from more than 3,000 libraries, archives and museums. It is used worldwide by diverse users, from CH enthusiasts to CH professionals. Their interfaces allow users to search – and browse their various collections.
Culture vultures:
- They are likely to be returning users.
- They mainly use Europeana to find resources to use in their own work, gain knowledge, expertise or inspiration.
Europeana also gather demographics information of their users. A quarter: a third explore a topic, just under a third came to know more about Europeana.
No studies have been performed to identify specific search tasks carried out by Europeana users, which is the focus of this work. This work complements these studies.
Our work built on this work by analysing specific search tasks that are carried out in Europeana.
Used previous literatures and qualitative data analysis to propose a scheme.
Various approaches have been employed to investigate search tasks, including diary studies and interviews [1], analysing samples from query logs [2,3] and
pop-up web surveys [3]. Explain why we chose pop-up web survey?
The survey was triggered when users scrolled halfway down either a search results page, or a Europeana item page.
The survey was administered in English and was shown to 30% (later increased to 66%) of users who visited Europeana using desktop or tablet devices.
Multiple iterations and pilot testing of the pop-up survey questions, we decided on 10 questions. This paper will only focus on the first 6.
The remaining 4 questions aim to gather feedback from users regarding the importance of Europeana features and suggestions for improving Europeana.
Mention that Q1-3 and Q6, users were provided several options to choose from.
The design of Q4 and Q5, the main focus of this paper, were modelled on Broder's pop-up survey [3] to investigate users' search goals.
Q6: “After this information you will:
Look for more information on the same topic using Europeana
Look for more information using other resources
Browse Europeana (e.g., look for other interesting things)
Have completed everything you need to do
Other: ________________________”
Spain 12.9%, US 8.9%, Italy 8.9%, France 7.1%, Germany 6.7%, UK 6.3%, Netherlands 4.2%, Sweden 3.3%, Hungary 3.3%, Brazil 2.9%
Academic (e.g., lecturer, professor, post doc researcher, academic support)
Cultural heritage enthusiast (e.g., hobbyist, genealogist, amateur historian)
Cultural heritage professional (e.g., curator, historian, archivist)
Student (e.g., college, university, further education)
Teacher (e.g., primary and secondary teaching)
Others – examples?
Qualitative content analysis based on Zhang and Wildemuth (2009). This was mainly an inductive approach but informed by existing frameworks where applicable.
47.1% is general topical search
51.3% of these were people who already knew about the site and so came directly to it
24.6% is specific-subject searches
11.3% is specific-item searches
63% were academics
48.1% of these were from people coming to Europeana via a search engine
7.1% is named author
7.1% is browse/explore
29.4% come from CH enthusiasts
We utilised an approach for analysing requests to archives and libraries serving audio-visual content.
Note: Each type of subject category is applied just once.
Another category: “Ambiguous or unclear”.
18 categories of subject contents.
Specific event/action (Great War)
Specific time (100 years ago)
Medium (photographs)
Specific event/action (Great War)
Specific time (100 years ago)
Medium (photographs)
Specific event/action (Great War)
Specific time (100 years ago)
Medium (photographs)
Specific event/action (Great War)
Specific time (100 years ago)
Medium (photographs)
Specific event/action (Great War)
Specific time (100 years ago)
Medium (photographs)
Specific event/action (Great War)
Specific time (100 years ago)
Medium (photographs)
Explain why medium wasn’t shown in the graph.
“Medium” is commonly used to refine the search
E.g. “images of Stuttgart”
E.g. “I am looking for photographs of The Trachian tomb near to village of Mezek, Bulgaria”
The data were annotated by one person. A second annotator assessed a sample of 50 items and 76% agreement was reached between the two assessors.
No prior suitable scheme was found to categorise information use for our data
We also analyse the relation between the search tasks and the uses:
the case of specific-item searches information from 48.1% of searches is used to create a new work, commonly reflecting the greater search for specific-items by academics. In contrast, for specific-subject searches the majority of search tasks are split between personal interest (44.1%) and creating a new work (42.4%). The results highlight, again, the differences obtained based on the user's search task.
What do users search for?
47.1% is general topical search, 24.6% is specific-subject searches, 11.3% is specific-item searches, and 7% search by author
30% search for general topics,
We used an existing methods for analysing audio-visual needs and designed a new scheme for categorising users’ search motives and uses of information found.