Malaysian Abstracting and Indexing SystemTracing and Mapping Children’s Behaviour When Selecting Books to Browse or Borrow: A Malaysian Study Syahranah A. Raqiauthor Zainab A.N.authorThis paper described (a) the investigation undertaken to trace the methods used by children in selecting books to borrow or browse in two children’s public library, and (b) the information seeking patterns adopted by the selected children. The sample comprised 43 children who used the Bayan Budiman Children’s Library, Petaling Jaya and the Kuala Lumpur Children’s Llibrary. The children were randomly chosen, aged between 7 and 12 and comprised those who entered the library with the observed behaviour of selecting books to borrow or browse. Two methods were used to collect data; (a) observing the children as they enter the library to select books to browse or borrow for fifteen to twenty minutes and (b) interviewing those selected with a semi structure questionnaire. Belkin’s information search strategy (ISS) dimensions was used to transcribe children’s browsing and selecting behaviour and Hayden’s behaviour mapping model was used to map the children’s total choosing process. The findings indicated that (a) shelf browsing was the most popular method of choosing a book combined with various strategies such as looking for a book by an author or series, finding a book by subjects, visually or physically scanning and recognizing the physical composition of the book; (b) children based their selection on the storyline, illustrations, cover designs and typography of the books; and (c) the searching behaviour is likely to be non-linear in nature. The type of problems children faced include understanding the standard subject headings and mapping these to their needs, effectively verbalizing their needs due to their limited vocabulary and obtaining the librarian’s advice to locate revision books they need. Children used visual cues rather from textual information when searching for books, inferring that children libraries need to support adequate and visually stimulating sources to make book searching fun and fruitful. Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Science2007-06-26Library & Information Science Unit, Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya Kuala LumpurConference or Workshop Item

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