How People Re-find Information When the Web Changes

This paper investigates how people return to information in a dynamic information environment. For example, a person might want to return to Web content via a link encountered earlier on a Web page, only to learn that the link has since been removed. Changes can benefit users by providing new information, but they hinder returning to previously viewed information. The observational study presented here analyzed instances, collected via a Web search, where people expressed difficulty re-finding information because of changes to the information or its environment. A number of interesting observations arose from this analysis, including that the path originally taken to get to the information target appeared important in its re-retrieval, whereas, surprisingly, the temporal aspects of when the information was seen before were not. While people expressed frustration when problems arose, an explanation of why the change had occurred was often sufficient to allay that frustration, even in the absence of a solution. The implications of these observations for systems that support re-finding in dynamic environments are discussed

Workshop on Desktop Search

The first SIGIR workshop on Desktop Search was held on 23rd July 2010 in Geneva, Switzerland. The workshop consisted of 2 industrial keynotes, 10 paper presentations in a combination of oral and poster format and several discussion sessions. This report presents an overview of the scope and contents of the workshop and outlines the major outcomes

Tradition and Innovation at Catholic Universities: Ideas From the Bernard Lonergan

This article discusses applications of Lonergan’s thinking on tradition and innovation to the world of Catholic education. Even now, at the beginning of the 21st century and 20 years after his death, it is worthwhile to explore his understanding of tradition and innovation, with attention to how it related to the Catholic intellectual culture of his own time, and more importantly, how it might contribute to an understanding of the identity of Catholic educational institutions in today’s period of great transition. In recent years, faculty members and administrators at Catholic universities have been engaged in many discussions about the Catholic intellectual tradition and Catholic higher education. Most of the attention in these conversations has gone to the issue of what it means to be Catholic. The next step is to explore what it means to have a tradition. Thus, this essay examines the usefulness of one leading 20th century Catholic intellectual’s approach to tradition as it relates to Catholic education in general and to Catholic universities in particular

Discovery Is Never By Chance: Designing for (Un)Serendipity

Serendipity has a long tradition in the history of science as having played a key role in many significant discoveries. Computer scientists, valuing the role of serendipity in discovery, have attempted to design systems that encourage serendipity. However, that research has focused primarily on only one aspect of serendipity: that of chance encounters. In reality, for serendipity to be valuable chance encounters must be synthesized into insight. In this paper we show, through a formal consideration of serendipity and analysis of how various systems have seized on attributes of interpreting serendipity, that there is a richer space for design to support serendipitous creativity, innovation and discovery than has been tapped to date. We discuss how ideas might be encoded to be shared or discovered by ‘association-hunting’ agents. We propose considering not only the inventor’s role in perceiving serendipity, but also how that inventor’s perception may be enhanced to increase the opportunity for serendipity. We explore the role of environment and how we can better enable serendipitous discoveries to find a home more readily and immediately

Community Greenspace\u27s Impact On Perceived Health Of New Haven Adults

Background: In 2008, for the first time in history, urban space is the predominant dwelling place of the human race, which raises concerns about how the presence or absence of green spaces influences the health of residents. The Urban Resources Initiative (URI) in New Haven, Connecticut offers a Community Greenspace Program that provides community members with resources for designing and stewarding an area within their neighborhood. The goal of this study is to determine if these community-developed green spaces improve the self- perceived health of the adults living in that neighborhood. Methods: Data on self-perceived health was gathered from the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE) 2009 Neighborhood Adult Survey and locations and participation history for green spaces were contributed by URI. Groups were included if they were active in 2009 and for at least one year prior. Neighborhoods were labeled high green space if they had \u3e3 sites or \u3e5% area covered by these sites. Logistic regression models were used to compare health to green space and neighborhoods while likelihood ratio tests were consulted to determine the amount of neighborhood difference in self-perceived health that could be attributed to differences in Community Greenspace groups. Results: There was no significant relationship between a neighborhood having high amounts of active URI Greenspace groups and better overall self-perceived health. However, having high amounts of these spaces did account for some of the differences in health between the various neighborhoods. Conclusions: While no association between URI Community Greenspace sites and health was realized, there is no evidence to the contrary. Future studies should seek to examine this relationship on a smaller, block group-level scale

Workplace Health Promotion in Small Businesses: What is the Evidence and Is There a Role for State Health Agencies?

Introduction: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 established a $200 million grant program to help small businesses develop workplace health promotion programs. The ACA specified the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) shall establish guidelines for programs based on best-practices and scientific evidence. Compared to large businesses, where workplace health promotion has been more widely implemented and studied, small businesses face unique barriers and enablers. It is important that HHS develops program guidelines using small business-specific evidence. Methods: To inform guideline development, a systematic review of the literature on workplace health promotion in small businesses and a scan of state health agency activities were conducted. PubMed, PsycInfo, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science (ISI), and Google Scholar were searched for evaluations of worksite health promotion interventions in small businesses in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe between 1982 and 2012. Articles that met inclusion criteria were evaluated to determine the extent to which interventions included program components required by the ACA, and to assess the quality of the literature. State health agency websites for each US state and Washington, DC, were examined to determine the scope of their workplace health promotion activities. Results: Of the 45 articles reviewed, sixteen met the criteria for inclusion. The health risk behaviors targeted were: physical activity and healthy eating (N=7), stress reduction (N=2), health screenings and follow-up medical evaluation (N=1), healthy eating only (N=2), physical activity only (N=2), and comprehensive programs with three or more behaviors (N=2). The majority of interventions used program components established by the ACA. Most programs produced some short-term changes in health risk behaviors, although most changes were modest. The quality of the literature was judged to be moderate overall, with few articles rated as strong. There appeared to be interest or expertise in the majority of state health agencies regarding WHP; at least eight states had experience with workplace health promotion in small businesses. Conclusions and Recommendations: The scientific literature on workplace health promotion in small businesses is limited and of moderate quality. Additional high quality evidence is needed to develop effective programs in small businesses. The Secretary of HHS should call on states with expertise for input on program guidelines, and should consider establishing an additional grant program for state health departments to evaluate the grant-funded programs in their states.Master of Public Healt

Calendar.help: Designing a Workflow-Based Scheduling Agent with Humans in the Loop

Although information workers may complain about meetings, they are an essential part of their work life. Consequently, busy people spend a significant amount of time scheduling meetings. We present Calendar.help, a system that provides fast, efficient scheduling through structured workflows. Users interact with the system via email, delegating their scheduling needs to the system as if it were a human personal assistant. Common scheduling scenarios are broken down using well-defined workflows and completed as a series of microtasks that are automated when possible and executed by a human otherwise. Unusual scenarios fall back to a trained human assistant who executes them as unstructured macrotasks. We describe the iterative approach we used to develop Calendar.help, and share the lessons learned from scheduling thousands of meetings during a year of real-world deployments. Our findings provide insight into how complex information tasks can be broken down into repeatable components that can be executed efficiently to improve productivity.Comment: 10 page

Surviving the Information Explosion: How People Find Their Electronic Information

We report on a study of how people look for information within email, files, and the Web. When locating a document or searching for a specific answer, people relied on their contextual knowledge of their information target to help them find it, often associating the target with a specific document. They appeared to prefer to use this contextual information as a guide in navigating locally in small steps to the desired document rather than directly jumping to their target. We found this behavior was especially true for people with unstructured information organization. We discuss the implications of our findings for the design of personal information management tools