this document, text or image about?' Gradually moving from the left to the right in Figure 3.1, different understandings of this concept evolve

This paper presents a modified diary study that investigated how people performed personally motivated searches in their email, in their files, and on the Web. Although earlier studies of directed search focused on keyword search, most of the search behavior we observed did not involve keyword search. Instead of jumping directly to their

The objective of the paper is to amalgamate theories of text retrieval from various research traditions into a cognitive theory for information retrieval interaction. Set in a cognitive framework, the paper outlines the concept of polyrepresentation applied to both the user's cognitive space and the information space of IR systems. The concept seeks to represent the current user's information need, problem state, and domain work task or interest in a structure of causality. Further, it implies that we should apply different methods of representation and a variety of IR techniques of different cognitive and functional origin simultaneously to each semantic full-text entity in the information space. The cognitive differences imply that by applying cognitive overlaps of information objects, originating from different interpretations of such objects through time and by type, the degree of uncertainty inherent in IR is decreased. Polyrepresentation and the use of cognitive overlaps are associated with, but not identical to, data

Many users of online and other automated information systems want to take advantage of the speed and power of automated retrieval, while still controlling and directing the steps of the search themselves. They do not want the system to take over and carry out the search entirely for them. Yet the objective of much of current theory and experimentation in information retrieval systems and interfaces is to design systems in which the user has either no or only reactive involvement with the search process. It is argued here that the advanced information retrieval research community is missing an opportunity to design systems that are in better harmony with the actual preferences of many users--sophisticated systems that provide an optimal combination of searcher control and system retrieval power. The user may be provided effective means of directing the search if capabilities specific to the information retrieval process, that is, strategic behaviors normally associated with information searching, are incorporated into the interface. There are many questions concerning 1) the degree of user vs. system involvement in the search, and 2) the size, or chunking, of activities, that is, how much and what type of activity the user should be able to direct the system to do at once. These two dimensions are analyzed and a number of configurations of system capability that combine user and system control are presented and discussed. In the process, the concept of the information search stratagem is introduced, and particular attention is paid to the provision of strategic, as opposed to purely procedural capabilities for the searcher. Finally, certain of the types of user-system relationship are selected as deserving 2 particular attention in future information retrieval system d...

An exploratory study was conducted of elementary school children searching a full-text electronic encyclo-pedia on CD-ROM. Twenty-eight third and fourth graders and 24 sixth graders conducted two assigned searches, one open-ended, the other one closed, after two demon-stration sessions. Keystrokes captured by the com-puter and observer notes were used to examine user information-seeking strategies from a mental model perspective. Older searchers were more successful in finding required information, and took less time than younger searchers. No differences in total number of moves were found. Analysis of search patterns showed that novices used a heuristic, highly interactive search strategy. Searchers used sentence and phrase queries, indicating unique mental models for this search sys-tem. Most searchers accepted system defaults and used the AND connective in formulating queries. Transi-tion matrix analyses showed that younger searchers generally favored query refining moves and older searchers favored examining title and text moves. Sug-gestions for system designers were made and future re-search questions were identified.

This study investigated the effects of subject knowl-edge and search experience on novices ’ and ex-perienced searchers ’ use of search tactics in online searches. Novice and experienced searchers searched a practice question and two test questions in the ERIC database on the DIALOG system and their use of search tactics were recorded by protocols, transaction logs, and observation. Search tactics were identified from the literature and verified in 10 pretests, and nine search tactics variables were operationalized to describe the differences between the two searcher groups. Data analyses showed that subject knowledge interacted with search ex-perience, and both variables affected searchers’ behavior in four ways: (1) when questions in their subject areas were searched, experience affected searchers ’ use of synonymous terms, monitoring of the search process, and combinations of search terms; (2) when questions outside their subject areas were searched, experience affected searchers’ reliance on their own terminology, use of the the-saurus, offline term selection, use of synonymous terms, and combinations of search terms; (3) within the same experience group, subject knowledge had no effect on novice searchers; but (4) subject knowledge affected experienced searcher’s reliance on their own language, use of the thesaurus, off-line term selection, use of synonymous terms, monitoring of the search, and combinations of search terms. The results showed that search experience affected searchers ’ use of many search tactics, and suggested that subject knowledge became a factor only after searchers have had a certain amount of search experience. 0 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Interfaces to databases have traditionally been designed as single-user systems that hide other users and their activity. This paper aims to show that collaboration is an important aspect of searching online information stores that requires explicit computerised support. The claim is made that a truly user-centred system must acknowledge and support collaborative interactions between users. Collaborative working implies a need to share information: both the search product and the search process. Searches need not be restricted to inanimate resources but people can also search for other people. The ARIADNE system is introduced as an example of computerised support for collaboration between browsers. A number of systems offering varied approaches to supporting collaboration are surveyed and a structure for analysing the various aspects of collaboration is applied.

Designing good user interfaces to information retrieval systems is a complex activity. The design space is large and evaluation methodologies that go beyond the classical precision and recall figures are not well established. In this paper we present an evaluation of an intelligent interface that covers also the user-system interaction and measures user's satisfaction. More specifically, we describe an experiment that evaluates: (i) the added value of the semiautomatic query reformulation implemented in a prototype system; (ii) the importance of technical, terminological, and strategic supports and (iii) the best way to provide them. The interpretation of results leads to guidelines for the design of user interfaces to information retrieval systems and to some observations on the evaluation issue.

The objectives of the study were to conduct a series of observations and experiments under as real-life a situation as possible related to: (i) user context of questions in information retrieval; (ii) the structure and classification of questions; (iii) cognitive traits and decision making of searchers; and (iv) different searches of the same question. The study is presented in three parts: Part I presents the background ot the study and describes the models, measures, methods, procedures, and statistical analyses used. Part II is devoted to results related to users, questions, and effectiveness measures, and Part III to results related to searchers, searches, and overlap studies. A concluding summary of all results is presented in Part III. introduction Problem, Motivation, Significance Users and their questions are fundamental to all kinds of information systems, and human decisions and humansystem interactions are by far the most important variables in processes dealing with searching for and retrieval of information. These statements are true to the point of being trite. Nevertheless, it is nothing but short of amazing how relatively little knowledge and understanding in a scientific sense we have about these factors. Information retrieval

Abstract We present a pipelining, dynamically user-controllable reorder operator, for use in data-intensive applications. Allowing the user to reorder the data delivery on the fly increases the interactivity in several contexts such as online aggregation and large-scale spreadsheets; it allows the user to control the processing of data by dynamically specifying preferences for different data items based on prior feedback, so that data of interest is prioritized for early processing.