The usability of the interface and the power of information seeking features have grown in importance due to the growing popularity of the Internet as an information vehicle and the migration of print libraries to electronic libraries. An empirical study was conducted of eighteen novice searchers utilizing the Library of Congress’ National Digital Library, the American Memory Collection on the World Wide Web. The goals of the research were to gauge the effectiveness of, and user satisfaction with the search and browse features; to study how novices search for information; and to determine if guided training was superior to exploratory training, noting rates of incidental learning. Results suggest that despite preferences for the search feature, browse proves more effective in retrieving information from the American Memory collection. Moreover, performance is related to training, guided training yielding relatively better results than exploratory training. Lastly, satisfaction with the collection was subjective and varied, possibly related to the participant’s interest in the subject matter and motivation for the tasks.