It is natural for humans to collaborate while dealing with complex problems. In this article I consider this process of collaboration in the context of information seeking. The study and discussion presented here are driven by two dissatisfactions: (1) the majority of IR systems today do not facilitate collaboration directly, and (2) the concept of collaboration itself is not well-understood. I...

Design engineering projects are reliant on collaborative effort among multiple individuals and/or departments through sharing experiments and data and collaboration on analysis of data and results. Information literacy is one of the competencies that design engineering students are expected to acquire through these courses, given that fact that students with an undergraduate Engineering degree ...

This article argues that existing theory and research on computer-mediated communication (CMC) provide a limited view of information-seeking behavior and proposes a conceptual model for its examination via CMC and new media. Although most CMC environments eliminate or severely reduce nonverbal and contextual information available to address uncertainty, form impressions, and develop relationshi...

The principal task of information professionals is to satisfy the various information needs of users in different contexts, studying their requirements, their seeking habits and their management and use of information. According to information behaviour researchers, information seeking behaviour analysis is the study of the 'activities a person may engage in when identifying their own needs for...

In this paper we look at some of the problems in interacting with best-match retrieval systems. In particular, we examine the areas of interaction, some investigations of the complexity and breadth of interaction and attempts to categorise user's information seeking behaviour. We suggest that one of the diiculties of traditional IR systems in supporting information seeking is the way the inform...

This paper outlines a broad research agenda aimed at examining the manner in which individual differences in information seeking behavior interact with the search task to affect search outcomes. As part of this agenda, we describe specific experimentation that will assess the impact of both Need for Cognition (the tendency to elaborate upon, structure and evaluate information) and Selfand Other...

This paper presents an argument that information systems may support deeper engagement between readers and the text by realizing the capacity for readers to take more active roles while seeking information. Information systems could support collaborative information seeking by displaying shared annotations. Subsequent readers would be able to leverage the semantic information encoded within the...

In various work domains, the collaborative performance of a work-task by a team can lead to a shared information need required to fulfill this task. Many empirical studies identified collaborative information seeking and searching (IS&S) as everyday work patterns in order to solve a shared information need and to benefit from the diverse expertise and experience of the team members. This paper ...

This article examines the information seeking behavior and meaningmaking in virtual play spaces by employing the example of one such space. The researcher examines the means by which game players get the information needed to succeed in a game through the lens of everyday life information seeking, and how they make meanings in the play space through the lens of the dramaturgical approach. While...

When searching for information, people often seek help from others. However, while people can benefit from communicating with others, they can usually satisfy their information needs, to some degree, without help. Because establishing explicit collaborations is often seen as onerous, there are many missed opportunities where shared experiences could save time and effort. In this work, we propos...