Search

Three months of server transaction logs containing complete clickstream data for an image collection digital library were analysed for usage patterns to better understand user searching and browsing behaviour in this environment. Eleven types of user actions were identified from the log content. The study is novel in its combined analytical techniques and use of clickstream data from an image-based digital library. Three analytical techniques were used to analyse the data: (a) network analysis to better understand the relationship between sequential actions; (b) sequential pattern mining to identify frequent action sequences; and (c) k-means cluster analysis to identify groups of session patterns. The analysis revealed strong ties between several pairs of actions, relatively short pattern sequences that frequently duplicate previous actions and largely uniform session behaviour with little individual item browsing within sessions, indicating users are primarily engaged in purposeful and directed searching. Developers of image-based digital libraries should consider design features that support rapid browsing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large scale of scholarly publications poses a challenge for scholars in information seeking and sensemaking. Bibliometric, information retrieval (IR), text mining, and natural language processing techniques can assist to address this challenge, but have yet to be widely used in digital libraries (DL). This special issue on bibliometric-enhanced information retrieval and natural language processing for digital libraries (BIRNDL) was compiled after the first joint BIRNDL workshop that was held at the joint conference on digital libraries (JCDL 2016) in Newark, New Jersey, USA. It brought together IR and DL researchers and professionals to elaborate on new approaches in natural language processing, information retrieval, scientometric, and recommendation techniques that can advance the state of the art in scholarly document understanding, analysis, and retrieval at scale. This special issue includes 14 papers: four extended papers originating from the first BIRNDL workshop 2016 and the BIR workshop at ECIR 2016, four extended system reports of the CL-SciSumm Shared Task 2016 and six original research papers submitted via the open call for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]