Understanding help seeking within the context of searching digital libraries

To date, there has been little empirical research investigating the specific types of help-seeking situations that arise when people interact with information in new searching environments such as digital libraries. This article reports the results of a project focusing on the identification of different types of help-seeking situations, along with types of factors that precipitate them among searchers of two different digital libraries. Participants (N = 120) representing the general public in Milwaukee and New York City were selected for this study. Based on the analysis of multiple sources of data, the authors identify 15 types of help-seeking situations among this sample of novice digital library users. These situations are related to the searching activities involved in getting started, identifying relevant digital collections, browsing for information, constructing search statements, refining searches, monitoring searches, and evaluating results. Multiple factors that determine the occurrences of each type of help-seeking situation also are identified. The article concludes with a model that represents user, system, task, and interaction outcome as codeterminates in the formation of help-seeking situations, and presents the theoretical and practical implications of the study results.