Abstract:

With the purpose of revealing users’ searching behavior in Wuhan University Library’s OPAC system,we obtained and analyzed a 18day log file from the server. Our analysis adopted Jansen’s search log analysis framework that comprises three stages, data collection, processing, and analysis. The analysis stage further divided into three levels which are term, query, and session. The results showed that users’queries are short, with an average length close to 2.9. Highfrequency queries mainly belonged to mathematics, economics, management and sociology. Session duration is 10 minutes on average. In terms of session length, there is a large difference between Chinese and nonChinese sessions.

Keywords: Search log, Searching behavior, OPAC, Library