Studies of search habits reveal that people engage in many search tasks involving collaboration with others, such as travel planning, organizing social events, or working on a homework assignment. However, current Web search tools are designed for a single user, working alone. We introduce SearchTogether, a prototype that enables groups of remote users to synchronously or asynchronously collaborate when searching the Web. We describe an example usage scenario, and discuss the ways SearchTogether facilitates collaboration by supporting awareness, division of labor, and persistence. We then discuss the findings of our evaluation of SearchTogether, analyzing which aspects of its design enabled successful collaboration among study participants. ACM Classification: H5.3 [Information interfaces and

Web search is often viewed as a solitary task; however, there are many situations in which groups of people gather around a single computer to jointly search for information online. We present the findings of interviews with teachers, librarians, and developing world researchers that provide details about users ’ collaborative search habits in sharedcomputer settings, revealing several limitations of this practice. We then introduce CoSearch, a system we developed to improve the experience of co-located collaborative Web search by leveraging readily available devices such as mobile phones and extra mice. Finally, we present an evaluation comparing CoSearch to status quo collaboration approaches, and show that CoSearch enabled distributed control and division of labor, thus reducing the frustrations associated with shared-computer searches, while still preserving the positive aspects of communication and collaboration associated with joint computer use. ACM Categories H5.3 [Information interfaces and presentation]: Group and

We describe the use of ethnomethodologically-informed ethnography as a means of informing the requirements elicitation, design, development and evaluation of digital libraries. We present the case for the contribution of such studies to the development of digital library technology to support the practices of information-searching. This is illustrated by a particular study of the help desk at a university library, examining the implications it has for designing appropriate functionality for a digital library. This requires us to address the problems of using ethnographic data in systems design.

Today's Web browsers provide limited support for rich information-seeking and information-sharing scenarios. A survey we conducted of 204 knowledge workers at a large technology company has revealed that a large proportion of users engage in searches that include collaborative activities. We present the results of the survey, and then review the implications of these findings for designing new Web search interfaces that provide tools for sharing.

… support for communication and collaboration is as important as support for information-seeking activities and that, indeed, support for the former is needed to support the latter. [Levy and Marshall, 1995] Interfaces to information retrieval (IR) systems increasingly support progressive interactive

Search engine researchers typically depict search as the solitary activity of an individual searcher. In contrast, results from our critical-incident survey of 150 users on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service suggest that social interactions play an important role throughout the search process. Our main contribution is that we have integrated models from previous work in sensemaking and information seeking behavior to present a canonical social model of user activities before, during, and after search, suggesting where in the search process even implicitly shared information may be valuable to individual searchers. Author Keywords Social search, social navigation, information seeking,

Research and theories of information behavior have traditionally focused on the "information man," i.e., on the individual as a seeker and user of information. The collective aspects of information behavior have been conceptualized, for instance, as consulting, informal seeking, use of person sources, and peer influence. These conceptualizations suggest a one-way process in which an individual consults another individual, however, information acquisition and filtering often is undertaken as a collective and collaborative effort. The paper develops a conceptual framework for the description of types and levels of information sharing in relation to document retrieval in academic communities. The concepts of strategic information sharing, paradigmatic information sharing, directive information sharing, and social information sharing are introduced to describe differences in the goals and purposes of information sharing in different groups and contexts of interaction.

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Abstract. Interfaces to library systems have largely failed to represent the inherently collaborative nature of information work. This paper describes how collaborative functionality is being implemented as part of the DEBORA project to provide access to digitised Renaissance documents. Work practices of users of Renaissance documents are described and the collaborative features of the client software are outlined. Functionalities discussed include annotation, the creation of virtual books and the inclusion of user-supplied metadata. 1

Groups of users often have shared information needs – for example, business colleagues need to conduct research relating to joint projects and students must work together on group homework assignments. In this paper, we introduce WeSearch, a collaborative Web search system designed to leverage the benefits of tabletop displays for face-to-face collaboration and organization tasks. We describe the design of WeSearch and explain the interactions it affords. We then describe an evaluation in which eleven groups used WeSearch to conduct real collaborative search tasks. Based on our study’s findings, we analyze the effectiveness of the features introduced by WeSearch. Author Keywords Interactive tables, surface computing, tabletop computing,