The search system is one of the most important pillars of information architecture and its design often influences the success of the whole web site. Nowadays to the most important qualitative factor of the websites belongs findability that preceeds usability, credibility and accessibility. If the users cannot find what they need they cannot use it. In practice, there are ten search pattern designs, based on a research of user behaviour, which support users while formulating their search queries. The study analyzes the new trends in designing search user interfaces which are confronted with a search patterns of some Slovak scientific library web sites and the best practices abroad. The detailed analysis of the Slovak library web sites shows that there are no design patterns as personalisation and unified discovery and therefore more attention is paid to these patterns. There are some recommendations for the designers of search that should be taken into account if they want to implement a system that meets user requirements.

1. Prof. PhDr. Soňa Makulová, PhD. Mgr. Katarína Buzová Department of Library and Information Science,Comenius University Bratislava New Trends in Designing Search User Interfaces as the Solution to Search System Information Ecology and Libraries, 10th – 12th Oct 2011, Bratislava, Slovakia

2. Structure of the presentation The importance of the search on the website External web search versus internal site search Design of search patterns Analyzis of search user interfaces Online library catalog Integrated search system and interface on the website itself Simple search Advanced search Search results Overall / summary

3. The importance of the search on the website The search is one of the most important element of any information system. According to Jakob Nielsen over 80% of Web traffic is generated by information searches initiated by users. In an experiment when users were asked to go anywhere they wanted to go on the web, in 88% they went to a search engine and only in 12% they went to a specific web site. According to the experts almost three quarters of the usability issues have to do with basic user goals: finding, reading and understanding information.

4. External (web search) versus internal search (site search) Site search is according to the research much poorer than web search. In the testing the success rate for people who used external search engines (Google, Yahoo!) was good, they succeeded 56% of the time. When the people used internal search engines to search just the site they were on, they succeeded only 33% of the time. But the site search should be much betterfor the following reasons: The search on the web site is not so complicated(much smaller set of pages.) Within a single web site you can better know your users . You can use your intelligence to offer users the high quality documents. You can take the advantage of metadata and controlled vocabulary, you know the synonyms, misspellings and other variants of words the users use. The summary of the web site is written by the individual experts.

5. Design of Search Patterns Peter Morville and Jeffery Callender published in 2010 book Search Paternswhere they suggest 10 patterns as the solution to problems when searching autocomplete, best first, federated search, faceted navigation, advanced search, personalization, pagination, structured results, actionable results unified discovery.

6. Autocomplete - belongs to the pattern that helps users to formulate their queries

7. Autocomplete

8. Autocomplete

9. Bestfirst iProspect Blended Search Results Study (2008)

10. Why 92% of the users click on the first three pages? Possible reasons for this include: refinement of the search engines’ algorithms to provide andrank more relevant search results, improved searcher query refinement, increased userexpectations and confidence in the ability of search engines to provide relevant results on the firstpage, decreased patience on the part of end users to look through larger numbers of results, theincreased ability of search marketers to optimize website content to appeal to search enginealgorithms the increased ability of paid search marketers to accurately identify user intentthrough the keywords they search.

11. Best first

12. Federated Search - involves the simultaneous search of multiple databases or collections

13. Faceted navigation - uses metadata fields and values to provide users with visible options for claryfying and refining queries

14. Structured results - the user is presented with a categorized structure results that include maps, videos, news, blogs, books, discussions, etc.

15. Personalisation

16. Actionable results - the users do not want just read the results they want to print, save, comment, rate and share them in their social networks.

17. Unified discovery - means that people come to web site to do different actions, they search, browse and also ask

18. Practical part of the study

19. Analysis of search user interfaces Slovak scientific library web sites ULIB SSLBB SSLPO CLSAS SPL SSLKE SML SCSTI

20. Subject and goal of the study Search/retrieve Online library catalog (OPAC ..) Integrated search system and interface on the website itself

21. Search user interface in online library catalogs

22. Integrated search user interface on a website Simple search Advanced search Search results

23. Simple search

24. Search box labels triange

25. Examples UKB SVK BB SVK PO SPK SVK KE CVTI SR UK SAV

26. Advanced search

27. Search results

28. Questionnaire a sample 343 respondents, 2011

29. Questionnaire a sample 343 respondents, 2011

30. Questionnaire a sample 343 respondents, 2011

31. Overall

32. Summary Library website is as important as the online catalog itself. Information design is more important than graphic design and visualization. Personalization. Collaborative filtering. Similar search results.

33. Thank you for your attention! makulova@elet.sk katarina.buzova@gmail.com