The paper examines the ways library catalogues are used in a university environment.
The quantitative and qualitative analyses of users' retrieval skills are based on
the search logs of a web-based online catalogue. The analysis reveals the problematic
points of user behavior that cause a relatively high number of unsuccessful searches.
It suggests that 3D visualization of authority data could become an easy to use and
quick tool of surfing among concept hierarchies thus carrying out the task that browse
searches failed to do. It could help to solve problems more traditional tools failed,
the pre-selection of the concept closest to the user's needs and to lead to increased
search efficiency.
