A model of scientists' information seeking and a user-interface design

Information systems that are available today do not optimally address the information-seeking behaviour of scholars, particularly those who belong to scientific communities; as a result, scholarly discovery is often cumbersome and incomplete. The hypothesis of this study is that an information-seeking system that is designed to address the nature of scholarly materials and the information seeking behaviour of scholars, particularly the members of one scientific community, will increase the effectiveness of the scholars’ searches and enable them to find and obtain relevant materials with greater ease and precision than current practices do. The information-seeking behaviour and search practices deployed by high-energy physics (HEP) researchers are explored through a series of interviews and observations. More than 2,100 responses obtained from a HEP survey are also examined; in particular, the participants’ open-ended responses are analysed. On the basis of qualitative and quantitative research regarding the characteristics of HEP scientists and their information-seeking practices, a set of six personas, representing typical members of the HEP community, is constructed. An original model is developed that leverages existing models of information behaviour, information seeking, and information searching and reflects the full spectrum of active information-seeking and information-searching practices of HEP scholars and the nature of the data that these researchers seek. The model is then evaluated by means of seven scenarios involving the personas constructed earlier. On the basis of the information-seeking model, a software user interface is designed as the future interface for the HEP INSPIRE information system. The user-interface design is corroborated through the model, and the personas are used to evaluate the design. Methods are suggested for long-term quantitative and qualitative monitoring of the ways in which this design supports HEP researchers. It is argued that the proposed user interface, which provides an information environment that accommodates the information-seeking practices of the HEP community in a friendly and efficient manner, will support HEP academic research—and research of other scholarly communities that share some of the HEP community’s characteristics—by shortening the search process and improving the findability of quality materials. This thesis contributes to the body of information-science knowledge in the novel modelling of information-seeking behaviour of a well-defined scientific community, the use of personas for the modelling, and the concretization of the model into a new user-interface design

A Model of Scientists’ Information Seeking and a User-Interface Design

Information systems that are available today do not optimally address the information-seeking behaviour of scholars, particularly those who belong to scientific communities; as a result, scholarly discovery is often cumbersome and incomplete. The hypothesis of this study is that an information-seeking system that is designed to address the nature of scholarly materials and the information seeking behaviour of scholars, particularly the members of one scientific community, will increase the effectiveness of the scholars’ searches and enable them to find and obtain relevant materials with greater ease and precision than current practices do. The information-seeking behaviour and search practices deployed by high-energy physics (HEP) researchers are explored through a series of interviews and observations. More than 2,100 responses obtained from a HEP survey are also examined; in particular, the participants’ open-ended responses are analysed. On the basis of qualitative and quantitative research regarding the characteristics of HEP scientists and their information-seeking practices, a set of six personas, representing typical members of the HEP community, is constructed. An original model is developed that leverages existing models of information behaviour, information seeking, and information searching and reflects the full pectrum of active information-seeking and information-searching practices of HEP scholars and the nature of the data that these researchers seek. The model is then evaluated by means of seven scenarios involving the personas constructed earlier. On the basis of the information-seeking model, a software user interface is designed as the future interface for the HEP INSPIRE information system. The user-interface design is corroborated through the model, and the personas are used to evaluate the design. Methods are suggested for long-term quantitative and qualitative monitoring of the ways in which this design supports HEP researchers. It is argued that the proposed user interface, which provides an information environment that accommodates the information-seeking practices of the HEP community in a friendly and efficient manner, will support HEP academic research—and research of other scholarly communities that share some of the HEP community’s characteristics—by shortening the search process and improving the findability of quality materials. This thesis contributes to the body of information-science knowledge in the novel modelling of information-seeking behaviour of a well-defined scientific community, the use of personas for the modelling, and the concretization of the model into a new user-interface design

Studying Lawyers’ Information Seeking Behaviour to Inform the Design of Digital Law Libraries

In this paper, we describe our ongoing work which involves examining the information seeking behaviour of legal professionals. This work involves studying the behaviour of both academic and practicing lawyers with the long-term aim of integrating user-centred legal information seeking support into digital law libraries. We report preliminary findings from the initial phase of the study, which comprised a series of semistructured interviews and naturalistic observations of academic law students looking for information that they require for their work. This group of academic lawyers often found it difficult to find the information that they were looking for when using digital law libraries. A potential symptom of this difficulty was that hazy and incorrect knowledge of the digital library system and information sources within the system were rife. This suggests the need for students to understand more about the digital library systems that they use (within-systems knowledge). We also found that although this group of academic lawyers often used several electronic resources in a complementary fashion to conduct legal information seeking, they often chose to rely primarily on one of either the LexisNexis or Westlaw digital law library platforms. Their preference was often based upon vague or sometimes flawed rationale and suggests the need for students to appreciate the situations in which different electronic resources might be useful (between-systems knowledge)

User requirement elicitation for cross-language information retrieval

Who are the users of a cross-language retrieval system? Under what circumstances do they need to perform such multi-language searches? How will the task and the context of use affect successful interaction with the system? Answers to these questions were explored in a user study performed as part of the design stages of Clarity, a EU founded project on cross-language information retrieval. The findings resulted in a rethink of the planned user interface and a consequent expansion of the set of services offered. This paper reports on the methodology and techniques used for the elicitation of user requirements as well as how these were in turn transformed into new design solutions

Report on the Information Retrieval Festival (IRFest2017)

The Information Retrieval Festival took place in April 2017 in Glasgow. The focus of the workshop was to bring together IR researchers from the various Scottish universities and beyond in order to facilitate more awareness, increased interaction and reflection on the status of the field and its future. The program included an industry session, research talks, demos and posters as well as two keynotes. The first keynote was delivered by Prof. Jaana Kekalenien, who provided a historical, critical reflection of realism in Interactive Information Retrieval Experimentation, while the second keynote was delivered by Prof. Maarten de Rijke, who argued for more Artificial Intelligence usage in IR solutions and deployments. The workshop was followed by a "Tour de Scotland" where delegates were taken from Glasgow to Aberdeen for the European Conference in Information Retrieval (ECIR 2017

A Study of Legal Information Seeking Behaviour to Inform the Design of Electronic Legal Research Tools

Our work is motivated by the desire to support digital library users in ?getting to grips? with electronic resources. More specifically we are motivated by the desire to support users in understanding how to use, and in which situations it is appropriate to use, particular digital library or electronic resources. This work focuses on lawyers as a specific category of user; Callister [5] highlights that lawyers been traditionally regarded as having poor research skills. Electronic research skills are no exception: Howland and Lewis [8] surveyed U.S. law firm librarians to examine the quality and extent of the electronic legal research skills of summer clerks and first-year associates. They found that these graduates were unable to efficiently or effectively research issues that appear routinely in actual legal cases and concluded that they were not efficient or cost-effective users of LexisNexis and Westlaw (the two biggest digital law libraries in terms of case, legislation and journal coverage). This was despite all of the students having received some training on how to use the libraries while in law school. Digital libraries have traditionally been regarded as difficult to use [4] and based on our contextual observations with academic lawyers, digital law libraries such as LexisNexis Professional and Westlaw are no exception. We believe that this difficulty of use contributes to the problems that lawyers face with electronic legal research. Furthermore, we argue that developing better research skills goes hand-inhand with developing an understanding of the electronic environments in which these skills must be practiced. Our current work is focused on gaining a better understanding of legal academics? and professionals? information seeking behaviour when using existing electronic resources. This understanding will then be used to inform the design of user-centred support tools for digital law libraries (and potentially the design of the libraries themselves)

Studying Academic Lawyers' Information-Seeking to Inform the Design of Digital Law Libraries

We report findings from the initial phase of our study on legal information seeking, which comprised a series of semi-structured interviews and naturalistic observations of academic law students and staff looking for electronic legal information. This study has the long-term aim of informing the design of digital law libraries. Participants found it difficult to use digital law libraries, arising from poor knowledge of the digital library system rather than from poor general electronic research skills. Hazy and faulty system-related knowledge were rife, suggesting the need for academic lawyers to understand more about the digital library systems that they use (within-systems knowledge). These lawyers chose to rely primarily on one major digital law library for legal information seeking. Their preference was often based upon vague or flawed rationale and suggests the need for academic lawyers to appreciate the situations in which different electronic resources might be useful (between-systems knowledge)

Facilitating pupil thinking about information literacy

Whilst information literacy is frequently taught through the imposition on learners of an established framework, this paper suggests a different approach by taking a lead from James Herring’s ideas. Specifically, it provides guidance to school-based information professionals who would like to encourage their pupils to devise their own flexible, information literacy models which are unique to them. Drawing on existing material in information science and wider thought, it proposes areas for coverage and considers how information professionals may support the dynamic process of model construction. It is recommended that those who are intent on facilitating the creation of personal information literacy models help pupils to identify the roles they take on in their lives, to reflect on the information needs that result, to ascertain the information they require in particular situations, to explore their information-seeking activities, to consider means by which information can be captured and to give thought as to how the information they have accessed may be used. This framework is, however, by no means rigid and readers are, of course, free to make their own adjustments

A Conceptual Model for Scholarly Research Activity

This paper presents a conceptual model for scholarly research activity, developed as part of the conceptual modelling work within the ???Preparing DARIAH??? European e-Infrastructures project. It is inspired by cultural-historical activity theory, and is expressed in terms of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model, extending its notion of activity so as to also account, apart from historical practice, for scholarly research planning. It is intended as a framework for structuring and analyzing the results of empirical research on scholarly practice and information requirements, encompassing the full research lifecycle of information work and involving both primary evidence and scholarly objects; also, as a framework for producing clear and pertinent information requirements, and specifications of digital infrastructures, tools and services for scholarly research. We plan to use the model to tag interview transcripts from an empirical study on scholarly information work, and thus validate its soundness and fitness for purpose

The onus on us? Stage one in developing an i-Trust model for our users.

This article describes a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded project, conducted by a cross-disciplinary team, examining trust in information resources in the web environment employing a literature review and online Delphi study with follow-up community consultation. The project aimed to try to explain how users assess or assert trust in their use of resources in the web environment; to examine how perceptions of trust influence the behavior of information users; and to consider whether ways of asserting trust in information resources could assist the development of information literacy. A trust model was developed from the analysis of the literature and discussed in the consultation. Elements comprising the i-Trust model include external factors, internal factors and user's cognitive state. This article gives a brief overview of the JISC funded project which has now produced the i-Trust model (Pickard et. al. 2010) and focuses on issues of particular relevance for information providers and practitioners