Browsing

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Browsing is a kind of orienting strategy. It is supposed to identify something of relevance for the browsing organism. In context of humans, it is a metaphor taken from the animal kingdom. It is used, for example, about people browsing open shelves in libraries, window shopping, or browsing databases or the Internet.

In library and information science, it is an important subject, both purely theoretically and as applied science aiming at designing interfaces which support browsing activities for the user.