Survey on High-level Search Activities Based on the Stratagem Level in Digital Libraries

High-level search activities for Digital Libraries (DLs) introduced by Fuhr et al. [8] go beyond basic query searches because they include targeted and structured searches like e.g. a journal run or citation searching. In this paper, we investigate if and how typical high-level search activities are really used in current DLs. We conducted an online survey with 129 participating researchers from different fields of study that aims at getting a quantitative view on the usage of high level search activities in DLs. Although our results indicate the usefulness of high-level search activities, they are not well supported by modern DLs with regards to the users' state of search, e.g. looking at a relevant or not relevant document. Furthermore, we identified differences in the information seeking behavior across the respondents. Respondents with a higher academic degree significantly considered journals and conference proceedings as more useful than respondents with a lower academic degree.