Œere is broad consensus in the €eld of IR that search is complex in many use cases and applications, both on the Web and in domain speci€c collections, and both professionally and in our daily life. Yet our understanding of complex search tasks, in comparison to simple look up tasks, is fragmented at best. Œe workshop addresses many open research questions: What are the obvious use cases and ap...

A partial review of Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False is used to articulate some systems-theoretic ideas about the challenge of understanding subjective experience. The article accepts Nagel’s view that reductionist materialism fails as an approach to this challenge, but argues that seeking an explanation of mi...

This paper proposes a conceptual framework for creative information seeking drawing upon Weisberg’s argument that creativity exists in everyone, and mapping the creative process described in the holistic model of creativity to the information seeking activities identified in the behavioural model of information seeking. Using scenarios of information seeking behaviour, mappings between the crea...

The ways in which people seek and process information are fundamentally epistemic in nature. Existing epistemic cognition research has tended towards characterizing this fundamental relationship as cognitive or belief-based in nature. This paper builds on recent calls for a shift towards activity-oriented perspectives on epistemic cognition and proposes a new theory of ‘epistemic commitments’. ...

This research set out to investigate the internet information seeking behavior of older users in New Zealand. The findings show that older internet users are diverse group with a wide range of skills and attitudes but that they do exhibit specific internet behaviors based on their information seeking behavior. A classification of how older New Zealanders use the Internet is presented based on a...

Many research-based models of information seeking behaviour are limited in their ability to describe everyday life information seeking. Such models tend to focus on active information seeking, to the neglect of less-directed practices. Models are often based on studies of scholars or professionals, and many have been developed using a cognitive approach to model building. This article reports o...

With the aim of improving human-centric risk communication, this research in progress paper argues for a social-cognitive perspective focusing on the interaction between laypeople and the information environment. A model is designed to predict laypeople’s environmental risk perception and information seeking behavior. Using data from a national online survey (N=1,032), our research is an effort...

Introduction: The State of Kuwait spends large sums of governmental funds on sending patients abroad to receive medical treatment. This study aimed to explain the rationale behind receiving primary medical care overseas, given the expense and inconvenience, from the perspective of Kuwaiti patients whose applications were approved. Methods: The survey was ...