Search Patterns in Hypertext Exhibits

As access to hypermedia documents becomes generally available, it becomes increasingly important to understand how casual users search for information. We have studied search patterns used in a small hypermedia museum exhibit. Our goal has been to identify preferred search strategies that can be supported for effective information retrieval from web-based information systems. Our data indicates that users make little use of the embedded links enabling associative selection. Instead, topic selection was predominantly serially through first-in-index and next-page sequences. Further, sessions were short in both time and number of documents viewed, indicating little general interest in ‘exploring’ the exhibit.