An Overview of Results from Rutgers' Investigations of Interactive Information Retrieval

Over the last four years, the Information Interaction Laboratory at Rutgers' School of Communication, Information and Library Studies has carried out a series of investigations concerned with various aspects of people's interactions with advanced information retrieval systems. We have been especially concerned with understanding not just what people do, and why, and with what effect, but also with what they would like to do, and how they attempt to accomplish it, and with what difficulties. These investigations have led to some quite interesting conclusions about the nature and structure of people's interactions with information, about support for cooperative human-computer interaction in query reformulation, and about the value ∗ Research supported in part by a DARPA Equipment Grant, by NIST Cooperative Agreement No. 70NANB5H0050, and by TIPSTER Phase III Contract No. MDA904-96-C-1297