What Does Transaction Log Data Tell
about Collection-Level Subject Access?
Oksana L. Zavalina, Assistant Professor
University of North Texas College of Information, Department of Library and Information Sciences [email protected]
Background
Research Questions
Studies of subject access to date have focused on itemlevel information discovery. They have shown that users
experience problems due to quality and application of
metadata.
Method: Transaction Log Analysis
A. To what extent do the users explore aggregations by subject?
Aggregations of digital collections provide a significant
source of data for analyzing collection-level subject
access and the role of collection-level metadata.
Opening History http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/history
IMLS-funded national aggregation of almost 900 cultural
heritage digital collections
B. How does collection-level information seeking behavior differ from
item-level information seeking behavior in aggregations?
• Systematic sample (12 weeks throughout 1 year)
C. How does collection-level metadata help the users of aggregations
find digital objects and collections of objects through searching?
• Retrieval sets for 501 unique collection search queries
• Collection-level and item-level user interactions
(query-level analysis)
• FRBR set of entities adapted as analytical framework.
Findings
Findings
1. Almost even % of collection and item interactions
2. Prevalence of subject browse
6. Role of free-text and subject-specific
collection metadata fields in
matching user search queries
Percentage of collection searches that
retrieved results with:
93%
74%
match in a field
50%
Description field (match in 93% of
searches)
Subjects field (50%)
Other subject-specific fields (3-12%)
Objects/genre
Geographic Coverage
Temporal Coverage.
3. Collection metadata records viewed 4 times as often as item metadata records
4. Collection-level searching is mostly
subject searching
FRBR Group 3 or subject entities:
object (e.g., “cookbooks”)
place (e.g., “Central Florida”)
concept (e.g., “transportation”).
5. Similarities and differences in
collection and item searching
• Prevalence in subject searching (FRBR
Group 3)
• More person, event, ethnic group, and
class of persons searching at item level.
36%
Distribution of search categories in:
collection-level search
28%
Free-text Description fields
21% of collection records would not
be retrieved without them
27%
26%
24%
item-level search
7. Role of free-text and subject-specific
collection metadata fields in
discovery of digital collections
22%
19%
17%
27%
12%
match in a field
25%
3%4% 3%
7%
3% 2%
match only in this field
24%
21%
15%
11%
7%
12%
8%
Percentage of collection records retrieved
with:
36%
13%
10% 8%
8% 9%
7%
match only in this field
Subject-specific controlled-vocabulary
metadata fields
overall, 41% of collection records
would not be retrieved without them.
12%
13%
9%
5%
93% of user searches are matched by Description field in at
least 1 collection record; search term(s) can be matched
only through Description in 74% of searches.
Conclusions and implications
Future research
1.
2.
3.
4.
•
Longitudinal comparative analysis of
transaction log data from various
aggregations of different size, scope,
and focus.
•
Session-level analysis of log data.
Users of aggregations often search and browse at collection level; view collection records.
Subject searching and browsing are prevalent among collection-level user interactions.
Provision of collection-level metadata in aggregations of digital collections is important for subject access.
Free-text collection metadata in aggregations should be complemented with subject-specific controlled-vocabulary collection metadata fields.