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Exploring Usage Patterns of a Large-Scale Digital Library

Log file (LF) analysis has been widely used in Interactive Information Retrieval (IIR) as a means to uncover information about users and their behaviour when searching for information. Various studies targeted small-scale IIR systems; Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) is an example. Instead this research considers a large-scale digital library that services heterogeneous population and provides divers digital contents. The aim of this study is to explore the hidden usage patterns (UP) of a large-scale digital library (DL) by analysing the LFs. A dataset of 28 million records obtained from the RERO Doc DL was adopted for our study. We identify and discuss three main distinct UPs: item seekers, navigators, and searchers. The UPs were characterised by session duration, session starting points, discovering content actions, functions used, and determination session points. We conclude that LF reveals valuable information that might assist DL developers and designers to improve user experiences.