Little is known about how readers select books, whether they be print books or ebooks. In this paper we present a study of how people select physical books from academic library shelves. We use the insights gained into book selection behavior to make suggestions for the design of ebook-based digital libraries in order to better facilitate book selection behavior.

When children search for information on a given topic, how do they go about searching for and retrieving information? What can their information seeking strategies tell us about the development of search interfaces for children's digital libraries, search engines and information repositories? We interviewed New Zealand (NZ) school children to seek insights into how they are conducting information searches during their education.

The strategies children use for digital information search in educational settings are rarely explored. Open questions remain on such fundamental issues as to which information-seeking strategies children employ, how they construct queries, and if the strategies that are taught are effective when using modern search engines. We conducted an observation study with school children to gain insights into these questions. As a result of this study, we identified query-creation and query-reformulation strategies that children use.

Abstract. Academic libraries have offered ebooks for some time, however little is known about how readers interact with them while making relevance decisions. In this paper we seek to address that gap by analyzing ebook transaction logs for books in a university library.Keywords: ebooks, log analysis, book selection, HCI, information behavior IntroductionConsider the process of borrowing a book from a library (digital or physical): the reader searches or browses the collection to identify candidate books that are potentially relevant; they each candidate book to assess its actual relevance; and they borrow those books deemed relevant to explore them more depth at a later date. Of course, finding a useful book is rarely so straightforward: these stages may be sequential or interleaved. In this paper, we consider a specific aspect of this process: the examination of a candidate book after the candidate has been identified in the library collection; we focus specifically on ebooks. How a reader explores physical books when making relevance decisions-which parts of books are viewed, how quickly, in what orderhas been relatively neglected [8], likely because such a study in a physical domain would be intrusive and 'creepy' [16]. To our knowledge this aspect of ebook selection has also not been explored, surprisingly, given that the availability of ebook transaction logs allows such a study to be conducted post hoc so as to avoid disturbing the experience of those using an ebook collection. This paper describes exactly such a study based on the transaction logs of a university library ebook collection.In Section 2 of this paper we explore the previous research on ebook usage and book selection (both physical and electronic); in Section 3 we describe the ebook collection on which our study is based and gives details of the log sample we analyzed. Section 4 presents the results of our analysis, including which parts of the

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Abstract. We discuss here our observations of the interaction of bookshop customers with the books and with each other. Contrary to our initial expectations, customers do not necessarily engage in focused, joint information search, as observed in libraries, but rather the bookshop is treated as a social space similar to a cafe. Our results extend the known repertoire of collaborative behaviours, supporting further development of models of user tasks and goals. We compare our findings with previous work and discuss possible implications of our observations for the design of digital libraries as places of both information access and social interaction. Permanent