«It works like Google, right?». First survey on the user-catalog interaction in the library of the Department of musicology and cultural heritage (Cremona) of Pavia University

Abstract

The paper presents results of a research about user-catalogue interactions developed at the library of the Department of musicology and cultural heritage (Cremona) of Pavia University (Italy). The research involved a simple random sampling of 30 users and was based on a multi-method approach, including screen captures, pre- and post-search surveys. Results show that users of the library of the Department of musicology and cultural heritage prefer searches by a ‘Google like’ interface, that they search only known items, and that most used search data are author surname (21,9%), or author name and surname (21,9%), or author surname and a word from title (15,6%). Further users put in less data than they know and quite often (36%) data collected from user by the surveys are different from data collected by the analysis of video recordings. This first research suggests to apply this multi-method approach to new case studies and to extend, if possible, researches to new search interfaces (in particular with regard to FRBR-zed OPACs).