Modeling search assistance mechanisms within web-scale discovery systems

The University of Illinois Library has been conducting transaction log analyses to model user search behaviors within our Library gateway. These analyses have informed the development and implementation of various search assistance mechanisms designed to facilitate search strategy modification and enhance user search navigation methods. This paper discusses the efforts to effectively overlay search assistance mechanisms into the web-scale discovery system environment. These search assistance mechanisms seek to meet user search needs and to address known issues with web-scale systems. This paper describes an evolving search assistance model being deployed in a web-scale environment and reports our findings from transaction log studies and user surveys.