Effects of "Advanced Search" on User Performance and Search Efforts: A Case Study with Three Digital Libraries

This study investigated into the effects of the "Advanced search" feature of three digital libraries on users\´ search performance and search efforts. Three operational digital libraries, i.e., the ACM digital library, the IEEE Computer Society digital library, and the IEEE Xplore digital library, were used in this study. Thirty-five students participated in an experiment and completed the assigned search task, using their preferred search feature(s). The results demonstrate that for ACM and IEEE CS, the use of Advanced search did not have a significant effect on improving search performance. Only in Xplore, the use of Advanced search significantly improved search performance. The search efforts increased significantly for the combined-use of Advanced search and Basic search in ACM and IEEE CS. The reasons leading to the results are discussed.