Free-form searching via web sites: Content and moving observed in the context of personal development

This empirical article focuses on information seeking—related to personal development—via World Wide Web sites. In order to obtain detailed and valid data, free-form Web searches by 15 individuals were observed and videotaped. The 687 sites visited by the informants, along with their actions therein, were examined and coded. The study explores the entity focus and origin of the viewed WWW sites, as well as the tactics of moving within and between sites. Correlations between the variables are also analysed. One of the most interesting findings was that personal resources—documents within the user’s computer—are a part of the Internet, too, when they are connected to it. This observation highlights the potential importance of researching the ways in which internal and external search for information differs, and what roles local resources have.