How Do Historians Interact with Digital Cultural Collections? A Study on Search and Selection Behavior

This paper aims to examine the search and information behavior of historians. The central question is, how historians achieve relevant results when they are using retrieval systems for their research and how they interact with these systems, especially when using digital source collections. Since problem-oriented information needs are predominant in academic research, a qualitative study on search and selection behavior was carried out. The results indicate that approaches are targeted-oriented and that scholars heavily rely on extended search functionalities and categorizations. Scholars arrive at relevant results through individually developed strategies and with a high degree of willingness to make use of the available options, even at the cost of a large amount of time. Transparency and quality can be identified as central topics in several steps of search and result evaluation. Hence, it is necessary that they are better addressed by digital cultural collections and further information systems.