Searching in a Book

Abstract

Information has no value unless it is accessible. With physical books, most people rely on the table of contents and subject index to find what they want. But what if they are reading a book in a digital library and have access to a full-text search tool?. The paper describes a search interface to Realistic Books, and investigates the influence of document format and search result presentation on information finding. We compare searching in Realistic Books with searching in HTML and PDF files, and with physical books.