Information-Seeking Behavior in Multilingual Digital Libraries: A Study of The Saudi Digital Library

Abstract

The information-seeking behavior has proven vital in understanding people's search behavior while seeking information about a particular topic or field. However, in some geographical regions, studies that focus on information-seeking behavior are few, specifically studying Arabic users' information-seeking behavior. A handful of studies investigate the information-seeking aspect of Arabic users, especially in the academic domain. Understanding the users' information need is essential to achieve satisfaction and provide reliable, easy-to-use, and intuitive services to users. This research focuses on the user's information-seeking behavior of the Saudi Digital Library (SDL). The SDL is the largest digital library in the Arab world, and it offers its services to Saudi students inland and abroad. This research aims to understand the information-seeking behavior and the needs of the SDL users and challenges they may face during their searches and report on how such difficulties may affect the users. It also aims to identify any challenges, either caused by the system or the users, and provide suggestions on how to improve the users' search experiences. Four questions have guided this research to report on the users' search experience while performing three search tasks with the user's choice of search term; an Arabic search task, an English search task, and a third task with searching in Arabic and English search terms. Applying the Stimulated Recall method, which involves recording the searching process, I recorded the screen as the participants searched the SDL, followed by semi-structured interviews where I asked the participants to report on their search process during each task. With a convivence sample, eight participants chose to participate in this study. Each participant's search experience has been investigated and reported on the challenges and the search behavior of each participant as individual cases. During the search process, I took memo notes of the x participants' search process to record their behavior while completing the search tasks. Data were analyzed via NVivo 12. I found that the SDL search system lacks accuracy in finding relevant results in the Arabic search and suffers from accessibility in English. Users faced difficulties with completing the search tasks; some challenges were due to the search system, and some were due to the users' information search skills. This study suggests implementing a more robust dual-language search system to help Arabic users find relevant resources quickly and easily and help the users identify and fix search errors. Around-the-clock online support would help Arabic users feel confident that they will find the needed support if they cannot find relevant resources. The study contributes to the literature regarding SDL users' behavior and Arabic users' information seeking, which is understudied.