Search (12 results, page 1 of 1)

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Abstract

The rationale for using information systems is to find information that helps us in our daily activities, be they tasks or interests. Systems are expected to support us in searching for and identifying useful information. Although the activities and tasks performed by humans generate information needs and searching, they have attracted little attention in studies of information searching. Such studies have concentrated an search tasks rather than the activities that trigger them. It is obvious that our understanding of information searching is only partial, if we are not able to connect aspects of searching to the related task. The expected contribution of information to the task is reflected in relevance assessments of the information items found, and in the search tactics and use of the system in general. Taking the task into account seems to be a necessary condition for understanding and explaining information searching, and, by extension, for effective systems design.

Source

Annual review of information science and technology. 37(2003), S.413-464

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Abstract

The aim of this article is threefold: (1) to give a summary of empirical results reported earlier on relations between students' problem stages in the course of writing their research proposals for a master's thesis and the information sought, choice of search terms and tactics and relevance assessments of the information found for that task; (2) to show how the findings of the study refine Kuhlthau's model of the information search process in the field of information retrieval (IR); and (3) to construe a tentative theory of a task-based IR process based on the supported hypotheses. The results of the empirical studies show that there is a close connection between the students' problem stages (mental model) in the task performance and the information sought, the search tactics used and the assessment of the relevance and utility of the information found. The corroborated hypotheses expand the ideas in Kuhlthau's model in the domain of IR. A theory of task-based information searching based on the empirical findings of the study is presented.

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Abstract

This small-scale empirical study focuses an students' anticipated and assessed contribution of references retrieved during the preparation of research proposals. It explores how the expected contribution of types of information before searches differs from the assessed contribution of relevant references found by the types of information. Twenty-two psychology undergraduates searched the PsychINFO database for references at the initial and end stages of a seminar for preparing proposals. Data about their subject knowledge, search goals, and utility assessments were collected using several methods. They were asked to predict and assess the utility of information types provided by relevant references for the proposals. At the beginning of the process, they found fewer general types of information and more specific types of information than they expected. However, the students tended to accept references according to their expectations. By the end of the process, the expected importance of general information types declined and the importance of specific information types increased. At the end of the task, students became more proficient at recognizing the utility and topicality of references. They also became more critical in accepting found information to match their expectations.

Source

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 56(2005) no.4, S.373-381

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Abstract

Information Retrieval (IR) is a research area both within Computer Science and Information Science. It has by and large two communities: a Computer Science oriented experimental approach and a user-oriented Information Science approach with a Social Science background. The communities hold a critical stance towards each other (e.g., Ingwersen, 1996), the latter suspecting the realism of the former, and the former suspecting the usefulness of the latter. Within Information Science the study of information seeking (IS) also has a Social Science background. There is a lot of research in each of these particular areas of information seeking and retrieval (IS&R). However, the three communities do not really communicate with each other. Why is this, and could the relationships be otherwise? Do the communities in fact belong together? Or perhaps each community is better off forgetting about the existence of the other two? We feel that the relationships between the research areas have not been properly analyzed. One way to analyze the relationships is to examine what each research area is trying to find out: which phenomena are being explained and how. We believe that IS&R research would benefit from being analytic about its frameworks, models and theories, not just at the level of meta-theories, but also much more concretely at the level of study designs. Over the years there have been calls for more context in the study of IS&R. Work tasks as well as cultural activities/interests have been proposed as the proper context for information access. For example, Wersig (1973) conceptualized information needs from the tasks perspective. He argued that in order to learn about information needs and seeking, one needs to take into account the whole active professional role of the individuals being investigated. Byström and Järvelin (1995) analysed IS processes in the light of tasks of varying complexity. Ingwersen (1996) discussed the role of tasks and their descriptions and problematic situations from a cognitive perspective on IR. Most recently, Vakkari (2003) reviewed task-based IR and Järvelin and Ingwersen (2004) proposed the extension of IS&R research toward the task context. Therefore there is much support to the task context, but how should it be applied in IS&R?

Series

The information retrieval series, vol. 19

Source

New directions in cognitive information retrieval. Eds.: A. Spink, C. Cole

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Abstract

In this paper, we focus an the effect of graded relevance an the results of interactive information retrieval (IR) experiments based an assigned search tasks in a test collection. A group of 26 subjects searched for four Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) topics using automatic and interactive query expansion based an relevance feedback. The TREC- and user-suggested pools of relevant documents were reassessed an a four-level relevance scale. The results show that the users could identify nearly all highly relevant documents and about half of the marginal ones. Users also selected a fair number of irrelevant documents for query expansion. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of query expansion is closely related to the searchers' success in retrieving and identifying highly relevant documents for feedback. The implications of the results an interpreting the findings of past experiments with liberal relevance thresholds are also discussed.

Source

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 55(2004) no.11, S.963-969

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Abstract

This study explores how the use of electronic information resources has influenced scholars' opinion of their work, and how this is connected to their publication productivity. The data consist of a nationwide Web-based survey of the end-users of FinELib, the Finnish Electronic Library, at all universities in Finland. Scholars feel that the use of electronic literature has improved their work considerably in several ways. This influence can be differentiated into two dimensions. The first one is improved accessibility and availability of literature, and the second is more directly related to the content and quality of scholarly work. The perceived improved access is positively associated with the number of international publications produced, among doctoral students in particular. The more direct influence of e-resource use on the content of scholarly work is, however, not associated with publication productivity. The results seem to imply that investments in academic digital libraries are beneficial for the researchers and for the universities.

Source

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 59(2008) no.4, S.602-612

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Abstract

Purpose - The aim of this study is to explore to which extent searching by medical students in Medline produces information items useful for writing an essay measured by precision and relative recall as perceived by the students, the proportion of cited items, and their utilization on four dimensions of the essay writing task evaluated by external assessors. It also aims to study interrelations of search process and outcome. Design/methodology/approach - The study subjects were 42 third year medical students attending a class on Diagnostic and therapy. Searching in Medline was a part of their assignment of essay writing. The data consist of students' printed logs of Medline searches, students' assessments of the usefulness of the references retrieved, a questionnaire concerning the search process, and evaluation scores of the essays given by the teachers of the class. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated for answering the research questions. Findings - The paper finds that precision and relative recall were not associated with evaluation scores in three of the four dimensions assessed. Some of the process variables were associated with precision and with assessment scores in two of the four dimensions assessed. Citing rate was negatively associated with recall. It seems that precision and recall are only weakly, if at all, associated to the use of information in the documents retrieved for writing the essay. Precision and relative recall are not associated to the way information in the retrieved items is used for performing the task. Users evidently look for a sufficient number of documents containing enough information for progressing in their task. Precision and recall are not sufficient measures in evaluating IR systems, but they have to be completed by other measures indicating the impact of the system on users' task performance. Originality/value - The paper provides useful information on students' information search process.

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Abstract

This article focuses an analysing students' information needs in terms of conceptual understanding of the topic they propose to study and its consequences for the search process and outcome. The research subjects were 22 undergraduates of psychology attending a seminar for preparing a research proposal for a small empirical study. They were asked to make searches in the PsycINFO database for their task in the beginning and end of the seminar. A pre- and postsearch interview was conducted in both sessions. The students were asked to think aloud in the sessions. This was recorded, as were the transaction logs. The results show that during the preparation of research proposals different features of the students' conceptual structure were connected to the search success. Students' ability to cover their conceptual construct by query terms was the major feature affecting search success during the whole process. In the beginning also the number of concepts and the proportion of subconcepts in the construct contributed indirectly via search tactics to retrieving partly useful references. Students' ability to extract new query terms from retrieved items improved search results.

Source

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and technology. 54(2003) no.8, S.759-770

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Abstract

Currently, there exists little evidence concerning how various characteristics of research cultures are associated with patterns of use of electronic library resources. The present study addresses this gap by exploring how research-group membership, across-fields scattering of literature, and degree of establishment of research area are related to patterns of digital library use. The analytic dimensions are derived from Richard Whitley's ([1984]) theory of the social and intellectual organization of academic fields. The article represents a first attempt to operationalize Whitley's concepts in a large-scale study of e-resources use. The data used in the study were gathered in 2004 by the Finnish Electronic Library (FinElib) through a nationwide Web-based user questionnaire (N = 900). Membership in a research group significantly increased searching in journal databases, the importance of colleagues as sources of information about electronic articles and journals, and the use of alert services. A significant interaction effect was found between degree of across-fields scattering of relevant resources and degree of establishment of research fields. A high degree of across-fields scattering of relevant literature increased the number of journal databases used mainly in less established research areas whereas it influenced the use of journal databases less in established fields. This research contributes to our picture concerning the complex set of interacting factors influencing patterns of use of e-resources.

Source

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 58(2007) no.11, S.1674-1685

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Abstract

Purpose - This paper sets out to examine the degree to which General Finnish Thesaurus (GFT) and FinMeSH cover various semantic expressions of medical concepts in patients' questions and physicians' answers concerning cardiovascular diseases. The former represents lay persons' information needs. Design/methodology/approach - A total of 50 question-answer pairs were collected in a medical web site. Concepts and their expressions (terms) with their semantic relations were identified in questions and answers. Findings - FinMeSH covered 65 per cent and GFT 41 per cent of all medical terms in texts. The expressions of patients and physicians matched better with FinMeSH than GFT regardless of the type of expression. The difference in favour of FinMeSH was typically about 25 per cent-units. Originality/value - The low fit with users' vocabularies makes GFT a poor tool for supporting searching, whereas the relatively high fit of FinMeSH suggests that it is a reasonable tool in assisting searching. Conclusions concerning the bridging of these two thesauri are discussed.

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Source

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 60(2009) no.6, S.1249-1257

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Source

Information processing and management. 39(2003) no.3, S.445-463