Venturing into the noise: Discoverability practices of open scholarly resources on a national digital library

Researchers browsing open scholarly resources on Gallica, the digital platform of the French national library, need to tinker with its dysfunctional search engine in order to make discoveries. While discovering unknown, yet relevant scientific resources is of paramount importance for knowledge making, little is known about how researchers deploy specific informational practices on, usually ill-equipped, digital scholarly platforms to turn search engines, designed for findability, into discovery engines. By crossing semi-directed interviews with log analysis, multiple “regimes of engagement” with Gallica were identified. Building on pragmatic sociology, the regime of unstructured exploration as a strategy for users to venture into the “noise” and make discoveries was studied and showed the inherent tension between findability and discoverability, heightened by the hegemony of general search engine. This mixed-methods ethnography of discovery practices on a digital library can help design specific tools and scientific policies. • Mixed-method analysis of the French national library's digital platform shows users' discovery practices. • Users of French national library's digital platform tinker with its dysfunctional search engine to make discoveries. • Unstructured exploration is a deliberate user strategy to venture into the “noise” of the collections and make discoveries. • Time is an essential resource to contextually appraise the relevance of documents discovered in the “noise”. • The tension between findability and discoverability is heightened by the hegemony of a general search engine.