Searching the State Library catalogue

This report details an analysis undertaken in September-November 2008, on logs of searches on the catalogues of the State Library of Victoria (SLV or State Library). It forms one of the outputs of the Searchers project. This three year project is a collaborative research venture supported by the Australian Research Council, being undertaken by the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology in partnership with the State Library of Victoria. The focus of this analysis is on explicit use of the Main and Pictures catalogue by members of the public, either accessing the catalogue from inside the State Library or remotely. Within the limitations of log data, the analysis examines who uses the catalogue, and how they use it, including how successfully they use it. It also provides a preliminary analysis of what people are searching for.