Search

The research reported in this paper is part of a large study that investigates collaborative information seeking (CIS) and decision making in the context of tourism. The aim of the present paper was to identify gaps and gap-bridging techniques in situated tourism CIS and technology use across the travel stages of trip planning and during the trip. Interview and diary data were collected from 20 free-trip groups of 63 Chinese tourists who traveled from mainland China to Australia during 2018-2019. We identified 8 types of gaps as well as 8 gap-bridging strategies. The results show that tourists demonstrated adaptive CIS behavior over the trip as they solved or compromised the gaps encountered. Suggestions on system design are also discussed to better support tourist information and collaborative practices. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Purpose Collaborative information searching is common for people when planning their group trip. However, little research has explored how tourists collaborate during information search. Existing tourism Web portals or search engines rarely support tourists’ collaborative information search activities. Taking advantage of previous studies of collaborative tourism information search behavior, in the current paper the purpose of this paper is to propose the design of a collaborative search system collaborative tourism information search (ColTIS) to support online information search and travel planning. Design/methodology/approach ColTIS was evaluated and compared with Google Talk-embedded Tripadvisor.com through a user study involving 18 pairs of participants. The data included pre- and post-search questionnaires, web search logs and chat history. For quantitative measurement, statistical analysis was performed using SPSS; for log data and the qualitative feedback from participants, the content analysis was employed. Findings Results suggest that collaborative query formulation, division of search tasks, chatting and results sharing are important means to facilitate tourists’ collaborative search. ColTIS was found to outperform Tripadvisor significantly regarding the ease of use, collaborative support and system usefulness. Originality/value The innovation of the study lies in the development of an integrated real-time collaborative tourism information search system with unique features. These features include collaborative query reformulation, travel planner and automatic result and query sharing that assist multiple people search for holiday information together. For system designers and tourism practitioners, implications are provided.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the collaborative information seeking (CIS) behaviors of students conducting authentic group work projects, and the features of a collaborative search system that are most useful to these students. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory study was conducted with 41 participants in ten groups working on an in class, for-credit group project assignment utilizing a collaborative search system. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered on the everyday search practices of students over the course of the group project, along with quality scores for the sources found. Findings Results showed that student behavior during their CIS related to the quality of their search outcomes, as the effective and efficient searchers found better quality sources. Students’ pre-task attitudes and experiences toward group work also relate to the quality of their search outcomes. Student feedback demonstrated the importance of making collaborative search tools convenient, lightweight, and easy to use. Practical implications These findings may be useful to researchers designing and studying the effectiveness of collaborative search tools, and to instructors planning to incorporate group projects into their classes. Originality/value In this paper, the authors document the authentic behaviors and attitudes of students conducting group projects in an classroom setting, and offer specific recommendations for developers of collaborative search systems. These findings provide greater context for CIS research into the collaborative search behaviors of students conducting group work projects.

This paper describes co-located collaborative information seeking in the context of the Social Media Tracking Centre (SMTC) in Ghana. The SMTC was operational for three days during the Presidential elections in Dec 2016. The SMTC»s role was to collaboratively find and verify novel, actionable, and relevant information on social media and escalate it to the authorities to use that information to ensure a transparent and peaceful election process. We performed a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with the volunteers at the SMTC as well as its managing team. We present, in this paper, the importance of volunteer motivation and co-location in the success of the SMTC, as well as the users» feedback on the collaborative tool, informing future design, derived from our analysis.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of utilising a holistic ergonomic approach, covering engineering, cognitive and social perspectives, to cultivate beneficial and productive collaborative information seeking (CIS) systems and environments, specifically with regard to three main CIS pillars (control, communication and awareness).Design/methodology/approach– A qualitative research approach, based on a selective corpus of CIS literature, was utilised to perform a content analysis to note if terms and concepts normally associated with engineering, cognitive and social ergonomics can be used to eliminate terms reflecting issues related to three CIS pillars (control, communication and awareness) that can benefit from a holistic ergonomic approach.Findings– The content analysis revealed that a fairly extensive amount of holistic ergonomic terminology is prominent within the CIS literature, therefore establishing a connection between the two disciplines: CIS and ergonomics. This suggests that CIS system issues could benefit from the insights of a holistic ergonomic approach.Research limitations/implications– Since this is an exploratory study the scope of CIS literature utilised in the content analysis was limited to a selection considered most important by the authors; this should be supplemented by further research.Practical implications– Intended to instigate interest in further exploration of the beneficial and productive implications and practical application of holistic ergonomics in designing CIS systems and environments.Originality/value– This is the first research paper in the Library and Information Science literature that explores the potential of utilising holistic ergonomics to cultivate CIS systems and environments.

I. IntroductionStudies reveal that often group members collaborate when searching for information even if they were not explicitly asked to collaborate [1]. The activity that involves a group of people engaging in a common information seeking task is called Collaborative Information Seeking (CIS). Over the past few years, CIS research has focused on providing solutions and frameworks to support the process [2]. However, work in this field to date has always assumed that information seekers engaged in CIS activity are using the same access modality, the visual modality. The attention on this modality has failed to address the needs of users who employ different access modalities such as haptic and/or audio. Visual Impaired (VI) employees in a workplace may often have to collaborate with their sighted team members when searching the web. Given that the VI individual's search behaviour is challenged by poor web design and the shortcomings of current assistive technology [3][4]; collaboratively engaging in web search activity with peers can be considered as a major barrier to workplace inclusion. This study explores the under investigated area of cross-modal collaborative information seeking (CCIS), that is the challenges and opportunities that exist in supporting VI users to take an effective part in collaborative web search tasks with sighted peers in the workplace.II. Study DesignTo develop our understanding of the issues, we investigated the CCIS activity of pairs of VI and sighted participants. The study consisted of an observational experiment that involved 14 VI and sighted users completing two web search tasks which was followed up by scenario-based interviews which conducted with seven of the 14 pairs from the experiment. We conducted the experiment to examine the patterns of CCIS behaviour and the challenges that occur. In the scenario-based interviews we examined the techniques used, tools employed and the ways information is organized both for individual and collaborative use. In the observational study, all VI participants used a speech-based screen reader. Each pair was given two search tasks; one task was performed in a co-located setting and the other task was performed in a distributed setting. For the co-located task, the participants were asked to work collaboratively to organize a trip to the United States while for the distributed task they were asked to plan a trip in Australia. In the distributed condition, participants were seated in different locations and were told that they were free to use any method of communication they preferred; 5 pairs used emails and 9 pairs used Skype. Seven pairs from the observational studies took part in the scenario-based interviews. The interviews involved the interviewer describing a CIS activity to the participants followed by four scenarios that contain questions relating to the management of the retrieved information.III. Observational Study FindingsA. Division of LabourIn the co-located condition, discussion about the division of labour occurred at two levels. Firstly in the initial discussion and secondly as a result of one participant interrupting his/her partner in order to complete a certain action. Three reasons were identified for these interruptions: (1) When viewing large amounts of information with assistance from their sighted participant. (2) When browsing websites with inaccessible components, VI users asked sighted participants to perform the task or assist them in performing it. (3) The third reason is related to the context of the task. In contrast, in the distributed condition, the discussion about the division of labour occurred only at the beginning of the task. The pair divided the work and started work independently. The participants only updated each other about their progress through the communication tool. Unlike, the co-located sessions, collaboration in the later stages was not observed. Additionally, VI participants' requests for assistance were fewer in this condition as they seemed to be more reluctant to ask for support in the distributed condition. When a VI participant encountered an accessibility issue, they would try on average 3 websites before asking their sighted partner to assist them. The majority (13 pairs in the co-located and 12 pairs in the distributed setting) divided the labour so that sighted participants performed booking related activities and VI participants performed event organization activities. VI participants emphasised that they chose this approach to avoid any issues related to accessibility. Vigo and Harper [5] categorized this type of behaviour as “emotional coping”, in which users past experience relating to an inaccessible action in a similar webpage or similar task affects their judgment on website use or tasks conducted. It is clear from the results that VI users put some thought into either dividing the labour in a specific way or to find some other way to get around the issues encountered.B. AwarenessIn the co-located condition, the main method to implement awareness was verbal communication. In the distributed condition, the only method to implement awareness was through email and instant messaging. To facilitate awareness of partner's activities while performing the task, participants informed their partners about actions. The participants tended to provide their partner constantly with information about their current activities to enrich group awareness in the absence of a tool that supported awareness in both conditions. In fact, pairs who completed more of the task in both conditions communicated more information about their activities. It was observed that when more information to avoid duplication of effort was communicated, the higher was the performance in the distributed condition. This indicates that making this type of information available between distributed collaborators might enhance their ability to complete tasks efficiently. This was not the case in the sessions in the co-located condition, as the sessions with lowest and highest performance reported the same amount of information communicated relating to duplication of effort. However, it was observed that pairs who performed well in the co-located sessions have communicated more information related to the actions they are performing that is not essential for the other pair to know. This indicates that facilitating the appropriate type and amount of awareness information in each condition is crucial to team performance and can increase team productivity [6].C. Search Results exploration and managementCollaboration occurred mainly in two stages of the information seeking process: the results exploration and results management. In the results exploration stage, collaboration was triggered when VI participants viewed large amounts of information with their sighted partner's assistance or by both partners deciding to explore search results together. The average number of search results viewed collaboratively was higher than the average number of search results viewed by VI participants alone. Screen readers' presentation of large volumes of data imposes a number of challenges such as short term memory overload and a lack of contextual information [3]. This stage is highlighted as one of the most challenging stages faced by VI users during the IS process [4]. The amount of retrieved information kept by sighted users is nearly double the amount of information kept by VI users. The reasons for this were twofold: (1) Sighted users viewed more results than their VI partners. (2) The cognitive overhead that VI users experience when switching between the web browser and an external application used to take notes. This increased cognitive load is likely to slow down the process. The effect of this is more apparent in the distributed condition where VI users are required to switch between three applications: the email client or instant chat application, the web browser and the note taking application.IV. Scenario-based interviews findingsThe scenario-based interview is a tool that allows exploration of the context of the task. This type of scenario narrative approach provides a natural way for people to describe their actions in a given task context. The scenario-based interviews revealed that collaborative searching is quite a common practice as all the participants were able to relate the given scenario with similar activities they had undertaken in the past. It found that often ad hoc combinations of everyday technologies are used to support this activity rather than the use of dedicated solutions. There were clear instances of the use of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook to support the sharing of retrieved results by both VI and sighted interviewees. Individual and cross-modal challenges were also extensively mentioned by VI interviewees, as current screen readers' fall short of conveying information relating to spatial layout and helping users form a mental model of web pages congruent with that of their sighted partners. It is clear that the VI participants interviewed were fully aware of the drawbacks that the serial nature of screen readers impose on their web search activities. In fact, these challenges have led them to choose to perform some web search activities collaboratively when that was an option. In the interviews, sighted users tended to use more complex structures for storing retrieved information, such as under headings or multi-level lists, while VI users tended to use simpler flat or linear lists of information.V. ImplicationsThe studies we carried out highlighted the challenges encountered when VI and sighted users perform a collaborative web search activity. In this section we propose a number of design implications for the design of CCIS systems. Due to space limitations in this paper, we only present three.1. Overview of Search ResultsDeveloping a mechanism that provides VI group members with an overview of search results and the ability to focus on particular pieces of information of interest could help in increasing VI participants' independence in CCIS activities. VI web searchers are likely to perform the results exploration stage more effectively and efficiently if they could firstly get a gist of results retrieved and could then drill down for more details as required. This will advantage both individual and collaborative information seeking activities.2. Cross-modal Shared workspaceHaving a common place to save and review information retrieved can enhance both the awareness and the sense making processes and reduce the overhead of using multiple tools, especially in the case of VI users, who do not have sight of the whole screen at one time. The system should support a cross-modal representation of all changes made by collaborators in the shared workspace. As changes in a visual interface can be represent it in colours, changes in the audio interface might be represented by a non-speech sound or a modification to one or more properties of the speech sound, for example timbre or pitch.3. Cross-modal representation of collaborators Search Query Terms and Search ResultsAllowing collaborators to know their partner's query terms and results viewed will inform them about their partner's progress during a task. Additionally, having a view of partners search results can allow sighted users to collaborate with their VI partners while going through search results.VI. ConclusionThis paper discussed CCIS; an area that has not previously been explored in research. The studies presented in this paper is a part of a project that aims to provide support to the CCIS process. The next part of the project is to investigate the validity of the design implications in supporting CCIS and their effect on collaborators performance and engagement.References[1] Morris, M. R. (2008). A survey of collaborative web search practices. In Proceedings of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, New York, USA. ACM.[2] Golovchinsky, G., Pickens, J., and Back, M. (2009). A taxonomy of collaboration in online information seeking. In JCDL Workshop on Collaborative Information Retrieval.[3] Stockman, T., and Metatla, O. (2008). The influence of screen readers on web cognition. Proceedings of Accessible design in the digital world conference. York, United Kingdom.[4] Sahib, N. G., Tombros, A., and Stockman, T. (2012). A comparative analysis of the information-seeking behavior of visually impaired and sighted searchers. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.[5] Vigo, M., and Harper, S. (2013). Coping tactics employed by visually disabled users on the web. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.[6] Shah, C., and Marchionini, G. (2010). Awareness in collaborative information seeking. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the potential of personal information management (PIM) and reference management. The contribution focuses on collaboration: the issues that need to be addressed in planning, the human component in collaborative information seeking, and issues for research by librarians.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is written against the background of research from information behaviour, PIM, collaborative information seeking and collaborative work.FindingsThere is growing emphasis on collaboration in information seeking, learning and work. PIM and reference management practices and their supporting software can greatly support this. There are, however, many planning/conceptual issues as well as the human component to recon with.Originality/valueAlthough much has been published on developments in PIM and reference management, there is limited coverage of collaboration and PIM and reference management.

Large-scale disasters can produce profound disruptions in the fabric of interdependent critical infrastructure systems such as water, telecommunications and electric power. The work of post-disaster infrastructure restoration typically requires information sharing and close collaboration across these sectors; yet – due to a number of factors – the means to investigate decision making phenomena associated with these activities are limited. This paper motivates and describes the design and implementation of a computer-based synthetic environment for investigating collaborative information seeking in the performance of a (simulated) infrastructure restoration task. The main contributions of this work are twofold. First, it develops a set of theoretically grounded measures of collaborative information seeking processes and embeds them within a computer-based system. Second, it suggests how these data may be organized and modeled to yield insights into information seeking processes in the performance of a complex, collaborative task. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of this work for practice and for future research.

The ubiquity of information and communication technologies (ICT) stimulate collaborative shopping and bring together customers with similar interests around the world to perform cooperative and collective online shopping. As a result, various models of collaborative online group buying are emerging. This paper analyses the phases of interaction during the shopping processes and provides a systematic categorization of the online group buying based on the topdown/ bottom-up crowd-shopping models. In addition, this paper discusses recent developments and challenges of group buying in order to contribute to future research directions within the field of collaborative online group buying.

This special issue brings together papers that describe some of the many ways that collaborative information seeking manifests itself. Some papers report on collaborative practices in a range of domains, including medical (Hertzum), legal (Attfield et al.), and online QA Evans et al.; Wilson and schraefel; Foley and Smeaton), and others describe systems and algorithms that support collaboration in various ways (Boydell and Smyth; Fernandez-Luna et al., Halvey et al., Morris et al.; Shah et al.).

Conversational approaches to human—computer collaboration have so far mostly been employed for the design of natural language interfaces. It is claimed, however, that the conversational interaction model described in the paper can also feasibly be applied to graphical and multimodal interactions. The model comprises two interrelated parts: first, the description of local discourse structures and functional interrelations between dialogue acts to capture (local) conversational tactics, and second, the description of global structures by so-called dialogue scripts which are related to (global) information-seeking strategies. The application of the model in a multi-media information retrieval system is described in the conclusions to the paper.

The paper reports a research in progress to study collaborative information seeking practice of learners working in groups in a senior design project course. The research belongs to the area of educational informatics where information behaviour is studied within a learning environment. The paper presents the definition of collaboration and the conceptual models of collaborative information behaviour.

This paper presents a task-based user study carried out to investigate how explicit roles assigned to group members affected collaborative information seeking behaviour during a travel planning task. 24 pairs participated our study where half of them were given a specific instruction to divide the roles into a searcher and writer, while others were given no such instruction. The evaluation looked at travel plans generated, search interaction logs, task perceptions, and dialogues between members. The results suggest that explicit division of roles can have significant effect son a group's knowledge building during the collaborative search task. The paper also discusses experimental designs of task-based collaborative search studies.

This paper presents results of an exploratory study which observed Linux novice users performing complex technical tasks using Google's search engine. In this study we observed that information triage is a difficult process for unexperienced users unless well structured information is provided which results in better satisfaction and search effectiveness. Providing a well structured information allows users to browse through different pieces of documentation without depending exclusively on the keyword search. Based on these observations, this research prototyped Kolline, a system that aims to facilitate information seeking for unexperienced users by allowing more experienced users to collaborate together. Users in Kolline create a task-oriented navigation structure based on web annotations. In this paper we discuss the potential benefits of this technique on helping unexperienced users to solve complex search tasks and present improvements for future work.

With the rapid development of Internet, there is a growing development of collaboration through the Internet. In this course, Collaboration for academic information seeking always takes place due to the complex and interdisciplinary of science research task. Based on this, the paper introduces the main features of academic information. Then it carries out the motivation analysis of collaborative information seeking for academic information in the Web2.0 environment. Meanwhile, the paper puts forward its aim and establishes the collaborative information seeking behavior model. This model includes four layers: demand analysis, search services, user interaction and outcome store and presentation. The construction of model makes us understand better the mechanism of academic information collaborative seeking and is helpful to retrieval system design.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify the triggers, strategies and outcomes of collaborative information-seeking behaviours of researchers on the ResearchGate social networking site.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from the population of researchers who use ResearchGate. The sample was limited to the Ph.D. students and assistant professors in the library and information science domain. Qualitative interviews were used for data collection.FindingsBased on the findings of the study, informal communications and complex information needs lead to a decision to use collaborative information-seeking behaviour. Also, easy access to sources of information and finding relevant information were the major positive factors contributing to collaborative information-seeking behaviour of the ResearchGate users. Users moved from collaborative Q&A strategies to sharing information, synthesising information and networking strategies based on their needs. Analysis of information-seeking behaviour showed that ResearchGate users bridged the information gap by internalizing new knowledge, making collaborative decisions and increasing their work's visibility.Originality/valueAs one of the initial studies on the collaborative information-seeking behaviour of ResearchGate users, this study provides a holistic picture of different triggers that affect researchers' information-seeking on ResearchGate.

Purpose Information seeking is often performed in collaborative contexts. The research into such collaborative information seeking (CIS) has been proceeding since the 1990s but lacks methodological discussions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss methodological issues in existing CIS studies. Design/methodology/approach The authors systematically review 69 empirical CIS studies. Findings The review shows that the most common methods of data collection are lab experiments (43 percent), observation (19 percent) and surveys (16 percent), that the most common methods of data analysis are description (33 percent), statistical testing (29 percent) and content analysis (19 percent) and that CIS studies involve a fairly even mix of novice, intermediate and specialist participants. However, the authors also find that CIS research is dominated by exploratory studies, leaves it largely unexplored in what ways the findings of a study may be specific to the particular study setting, appears to assign primacy to precision at the expense of generalizability, struggles with investigating how CIS activities extend over time and provides data about behavior to a larger extent than about reasons, experiences and especially outcomes. Research limitations/implications The major implication of this review is its identification of the need for a shared model to which individual CIS studies can contribute in a cumulative manner. To support the development of such a model, the authors discuss a model of the core CIS process and a model of the factors that trigger CIS. Originality/value This study assesses the current state of CIS research, provides guidance for future CIS studies and aims to inspire further methodological discussion.

Im vorliegenden Paper wird eine Studie dargestellt, in der das kollaborative Informationssucherverhalten (Collaborative Information Seeking, kurz: CIS) zwischen Generationen untersucht wurde. In Teams von zwei Personen sollten die Suchgruppen eine Reise planen und dafür im Internet nach Reiseinformation recherchieren. Anhand der Forschungsfrage: „Wie wird die kollaborative Informationssuche zwischen unterschiedlichen Generationen durchgeführt?“ fand eine qualitative Studie statt, in welcher die Organisation und das generelle Vorgehen bei der Suche beobachtet wurden. Im Fokus standen dabei das Rollenverhalten der Beteiligten und die Frage danach, ob eine Person eine leitende Position während der Suche einnimmt. Die Suche und Zusammenarbeit wurden zu diesem Zweck mittels Videos aufgenommen und nachfolgend analysiert. Im Anschluss partizipierten die Testpersonen in leitfadengestützten Gruppeninterviews. Die Ergebnisse deuten in allen Teams auf einen ähnlichen Ablauf der gemeinsamen Suche hin. Eine Leitungsfunktion war nur bedingt zu beobachten, wobei die Testpersonen jedoch spezifische Rollen während der Suche eingenommen haben., Session 4: Information Retrieval

World Wide Web (WWW) contains different kinds of information whether it be social, educational, historical, sports, news, financial, weather, technology, politics etc. Most of the people spend time on the internet to access data for information seeking purposes. Information provided on the web is available in different formats like in text format, image format or video format, and they can be accessed through different access interfaces. Accessing information from such a large place i.e. World Wide Web through so many websites would become a very cumbersome process, therefore, in this paper, we present a new method which will produce information based on the user input using appropriate keywords. The data will be retrieved from the internet using Data Mining approach without the need for rules and training of pages. The main focus will be to extract or retrieve data of a person like educational qualifications, gender, contact information, contributions in his work, his/her social nature, etc. The query to be searched on the platform or model should have meaningful keywords attached to it best describing the person or else data of some different person might be fetched.

PurposeSocial question and answer (SQA) site is one of the factors that boosted up and popularized the vision of social web. It enables community members to post highly valued answers to globally asked questions and information seekers to grab intellectual information in a contextual, concise, and meaningful format at the cost of investing a few minutes. The purpose of this paper is to present a common architecture, history, and a comprehensive review of such sites.Design/methodology/approachA critical and analytical investigation of the state-of-the-art SQA sites and relevant literature has been carried out with the intention to explore the noticeable features of such sites.FindingsBy studying relevant literature, and analysing a number of existing systems, a number of research challenges are identified and a generic architecture of SQA sites is contributed.Practical implicationsThe review contributes a comprehensive knowledge about SQA systems and aims to be helpful to new researchers who want to get a broad picture of SQA systems on a single platform. The domain is in its infancy and requires tremendous efforts from the research community to explore its salient aspects with respect to the human world.Originality/valueThe study inspects SQA sites on a large scale and makes an original contribution by presenting a comprehensive review, future research challenges, and a generic architecture of SQA sites.

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York. The paper describes our novel perspective on ‘searching to learn’ through collaborative information seeking (CIS). We describe this perspective, which motivated empirical work to ‘orchestrate’ a CIS searching to learn session. The work is described through the lens of orchestration, an approach which brings to the fore the ways in which: background context—including practical classroom constraints, and theoretical perspective; actors—including the educators, researchers, and technologies; and activities that are to be completed, are brought into alignment. The orchestration is exemplified through the description of research work designed to explore a pedagogically salient construct (epistemic cognition), in a particular institutional setting. Evaluation of the session indicated satisfaction with the orchestration from students, with written feedback indicating reflection from them on features of the orchestration. We foreground this approach to demonstrate the potential of orchestration as a design approach for researching and implementing CIS as a ‘searching to learn’ context.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate when and how people working collaboratively could be assisted in a fact-finding task, specifically focusing on team size and its effect on the outcomes of such a task. This is a follow-up to a previously published study that examined exploratory search tasks.,This research investigates the effects of team size on fact-finding tasks using a lab study involving 68 participants – 12 individuals, ten dyads, and 12 triads. The evaluation framework developed in the preceding work is used to compare the findings with respect to the earlier traditional exploratory task (Task 1) and the complex fact-finding task reported here (Task 2), with task type being the only difference.,The analyses of the user study data show that while adding more people to an exploratory search task could be beneficial in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, such findings do not apply in a complex fact-finding task. Indeed, results showed that the individuals were more efficient and effective doing Task 2 than they were in Task 1. Moreover, they outperformed the dyads and triads in Task 2 with respect to these two measures, which relate to the coverage of useful information and its relation to the expression of information needs. If the total time taken by each team is disregarded, the dyads and triads did better than the individuals in answering the fact-finding questions. But considering the time effect, this performance boost does not keep up with the increased group size.,The findings shed light not only on when, how, and why certain collaborations become successful, but also how team size affects specific aspects of information seeking, including information exposure, information relevancy, information search, and performance. This has implications for system designers, information managers, and educators. The presented work is novel in that it is the first empirical work to show the difference in individual and collaborative work (by dyads and triads) between exploratory and fact-finding tasks.

In this paper, we explore a network of distributed individuals’ collective efforts to establish an innovation ecology allowing them to engage in bottom up creative technological practices in today’s information society. Specifically, we present an empirical study of the technological practices in an emerging creative technology community – independent [indie] game developers in the United States. Based on indie game developers’ own accounts, we identified four themes that constitute an innovation ecology from the bottom up, including problem solving; collaborative information seeking, sharing, and reproducing; community support; and policy and politics. We argue that these findings inform our understanding of bottom up technological innovation and shed light on the design of sociotechnical systems to mediate and support such innovation beyond the gaming context.

The workshop on the evaluation of collaborative information retrieval and seeking (ECol) was held in conjunction with the 24th Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM) in Melbourne, Australia. The workshop featured three main elements. First, a keynote on the main dimensions, challenges, and opportunities in collaborative information retrieval and seeking by Chirag Shah. Second, an oral presentation session in which four papers were presented. Third, a discussion based on three seed research questions: (1) In what ways is collaborative search evaluation more challenging than individual interactive information retrieval (IIIR) evaluation? (2) Would it be possible and/or useful to standardise experimental designs and data for collaborative search evaluation? and (3) For evaluating collaborative search, can we leverage ideas from other tasks such as diversified search, subtopic mining and/or e-discovery? The discussion was intense and raised many points and issues, leading to the proposition that a new evaluation track focused on collaborative information retrieval/seeking tasks, would be worthwhile.

Professionally, people often conduct their work in settings containing a range of different collaborative situations and work practices in which people handle information and work activities. Still, work tasks are usually considered and perceived as individual activities although the technology and the characteristics of the tasks require collaborative and cooperative handling processes. This viewpoint still produces technologies that, in general, assume individual information management and decision-making. Based on previous research on information culture (IC) and collaborative information seeking (CIS), this paper proposes an integrated framework where both environmental (cultural) as well as collaborative aspects of organisational information behaviour are present. This kind of framework would be useful in studies looking into how information is retrieved, how information is organised and managed, and how information is used as a resource in collaborative settings. It gives a more holistic perspective to information use and practices in organisations where culture, collaboration and awareness are especially brought to common attention for effective information management in organisations.

The importance of collaborative information seeking (CIS) during team decision-making is starting to be examined within the human factors community. Without the ability to collaborate to seek and retrieve information, a team cannot make accurate decisions. One area of particular importance to CIS is individual and team cognition. Through previous research, we know that cognition is critical to the performance of many collaborative efforts. Yet, there has been little research on the relationship of cognition to CIS. Consequently, appropriate methods to use and how to use them have not been clearly identified. One useful approach to understanding cognition during CIS is to implement a concept mapping methodology. In this paper, we discuss concept mapping and utilize it in a laboratory study focused on understanding the role of cognition during CIS. Through analysis of CIS oriented individual and team concept maps, we gained insights into how people cognitively perceive CIS.

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 shared annotations to interact with the text in more efficient and effective ways. Different types of collaboration and contexts in which it occurs will likely influence the ways in which shared annotations are used by readers and information systems to support collaborative information seeking. Directions for exploring the applications of shared annotations are discussed, concluding with four research questions for future work.

Social media is an increasingly important source for tourists seeking information about their intending holidays. Tourists obtain travel related information by interacting with their social networks. However, social media users’ collaborative search behavior is an under-studied area. This paper investigates collaborative search behavior of mobile social media users when they plan for a group trip. We surveyed sixty-three (63) Australian participants. Findings show that tourists collaborated on social media for a range of trip planning activities, such as searching, gathering, obtaining, sharing and validating information at different stages of the trip planning process. Notable findings include 92.10% of participants used Facebook messenger for collaborations, and the majority (62.96%) searched on social media for information about attractions to see at their destination; also, 73.80% used social media to gather information related to their travel at the beginning of their planning process and 41% used social media at the end of planning process to validate information for their travel decision-making. About 42.86% changed their minds as a result of social media interactions. Refereed/Peer-reviewed