Monitoring user search success through transaction log analysis: the WolfPAC example

It is common knowledge that public card catalogs in libraries have been poorly understood and inefficiently utilized by a large portion of their searchers. The myriad reasons for this situation range from the complicated nature of card filing rules to poor or total lack of understanding of assigned subject headings on the part of users. The emergence of automated online public access catalogs was initially seen as a means of overcoming this pattern of poor utilization. Instead, their widespread adoption has often transferred ineffective user searching behavior to an electronic environment.