Museum Web search behavior of special interest visitors

There is a current trend to make museum collections widely accessible by digitising cultural heritage collections for the Internet. The present study takes a user perspective and explores the characteristics of online museum visitors' web search behaviour. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods was deployed in a case study at a National Museum of Military History. Quantitatively, data from a web questionnaire survey and a user study of interactive searching behaviour were collected and analysed. Qualitatively, observation protocols were coded and analysed based on inductive content analysis. It was found that metadata elements on factual object related information, provenience, and historic context was indicated to be relevant by the majority of the respondents, characterising the group of special interest museum visitors as information hungry. Further, four main characteristics of online museum visitors' searching behaviour were identified: (a) searching behaviour has a strong visual aspect, (b) topical searching is predominantly exploratory, (c) users apply broad known item searches, and (d) meaning making is central to the search process. •The article presents a mixed methods study of museum visitors’ web search behavior.•Four main characteristics of museum visitors’ web search behavior are identified.•Searching online museum collections is a highly visual experience.•Meaning making is central to how users navigate and make sense of information.