Document familiarity, relevance, and bradford''s law: The getty online searching project report no. 5

The Getty Online Searching Project studied the end-user searching behavior of 27 humanities scholars over a 2-year period. Surprising results were that a number of scholars anticipated—and found—that they were already familiar with a very high percentage of the records their searches retrieved. Previous familiarity with documents has been mentioned in discussion of relevance and information retrieval (IR) theory, but it has generally not been considered a significant factor. However, these experiences indicate that high document familiarity can be a significant factor in searching. Some implications are drawn regarding the impact of high document familiarity on relevance and IR theory. Finally, some speculations are made regarding high document familiarity and Bradford's Law.