This paper describes the results of an observational study into the methods people use to manage web information for re-use. People observed in our study used a diversity of methods and associated tools. For example, several participants emailed web addresses (URLs) along with comments to themselves and to others. Other methods observed included printing out web pages, saving web pages to the hard drive, pasting the address for a web page into a document and pasting the address into a personal web site. Ironically, two web browser tools that have been explicitly developed to help users track web information -- the bookmarking tool and the history list -- were not widely used by participants in this study. A functional analysis helps to explain the observed diversity of methods. Methods vary widely in the functions they provide. For example, a web address pasted into a self-addressed email can provide an important reminding function together with a context of relevance: The email arrives in an inbox which is checked at regular intervals and the email can include a few lines of text that explain the URL's relevance and the actions to be taken. On the other hand, for most users in the study, the bookmarking tool ("Favorites" or "Bookmarks" depending on the browser) provided neither a reminding function nor a context of relevance. The functional analysis can help to assess the likely success of various tools, current and proposed.

Information workers center on seeking, gathering, and interpreting information in order to provide value-added information as a basis for making decisions and judgments critical to the function of an enterprise. This longitudinal case study investigates changes in perceptions of the information search process of an early career information worker as he becomes more experienced and proficient at his work. Building on Kuhlthau’s earlier research, comparisons of the user’s perceptions of uncertainty, complexity, construction, and sources in information tasks were made over a 5-year period. This is a case study, but it provides insight into issues raised in prior quantitative studies of securities analysts.

Abstract: Environmental scanning is the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's external environment, the knowledge of which would assist management in planning the organization's future course of action. Depending on the organization's beliefs about environmental analyzability and the extent that it intrudes into the environment to understand it, four modes of scanning may be differentiated: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, enacting, and searching. We analyze each mode of scanning by examining its characteristic information needs, information seeking, and information use behaviors. In addition, we analyze organizational knowing processes by considering the sensemaking, knowledge creating and decision

The emerging multiple media portals accessed by a variety of terminals require semi- and fully automatic procedures for managing the material. The IMU trial system, developed in this work, automatizes parts of the news content acquirement and processing work of the portal web master. The IMU active proxy server extracts the metadata from news web sites and from the television news broadcasts through video analysis making an automatic classification and linking of related articles and TV clips possible. The deeply integrated material is partioned into news composites called channels, which can be personalised by the user. The automatically computed event and media calendar allows for a new type of integration of news and up-coming events. The news content is refined by setting up filters for monitoring of the business environment. Through our interfaces for PC, TV, WAP and MP3 terminals, the user accesses the same news content at work, at home in the living room and on the move. To balance the automatic procedures with journalistic judgement, we created web tools for human editors to control and override the automatic operations and for creating new content. The community feature enables groups to share news and to discuss topics internally. The trial including closely 400 users with PC, TV and WAP terminals showed a stable interest in the service. The typical user retrieved a few fresh articles including a TV clip at prime time in the evening. The television set user retrieved two times more material than the PC user, but proportionally less news. The most popular channels for the TV-user were TV programme schedules and TV clips. The community channels attracted the TV set users. Personalization was used scarcely and searches even more seldom. The interviews showed tha...

CEOs SCAN THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT for information about events and trends in order to plan their organizations ’ future courses of action. This study investigates how CEOs in the Canadian publishing and telecommunications industries acquire and use information about the business environment. The uncertainty of the environment was found to be related to the amount of scanning done. The perceived quality of information sources and the environmental uncertainty accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in source use. Information about the environment was often used in making decisions concerning organizational improvements and business strategies.

Abstract not found