Information Seeking in Electronic Environments

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, 1995 - Computers - 224 pages
"Significant amounts of our time and energy are devoted to creating, managing, and avoiding information. Computers and telecommunications technology have extended our regard for information and are driving changes in how we learn, work, and play. One result of these developments is that skills and strategies for storing and retrieving information have become more essential and more pervasive in our culture. This book considers how electronic technologies have changed these skills and strategies and augmented the fundamental human activity of information seeking. The author makes a case for creating new interface designs that allow the information seeker to choose what strategy to apply according to their immediate needs. Such systems may be designed by providing information seekers with alternative interface mechanisms for displaying and manipulating multiple levels of representation for information objects. Information Seeking in Electronic Environments is essential reading for researchers and graduate students in information science, human-computer interaction, and education, as well as for designers of information retrieval systems and interfaces for digital libraries and archives"--Publisher description.
 

Contents

Information and information seeking
1
What is information?
5
Preview
9
Information seekers and electronic environments
11
Influence of electronic digital technology on personal information infrastructures
14
Interactivity
17
Systems data structures and algorithms
22
Informationseeking perspective and framework
27
Why browse?
102
Browsing strategies and tactics
106
Limitations of browsing
117
How systems support browsing
120
Bibliographic and online search systems
121
Fulltext search systems
123
Graphics search systems
125
Visual queries and browsers
132

Humancentered models of information seeking
29
Studies of users of electronic retrieval systems
30
Factors of information seeking
32
Information seeker
33
Task
36
Search system
38
Domain
45
Setting
46
Outcomes
47
Summary of factors
48
Informationseeking process
49
Recognize and accept an information problem
51
Choose a search system
52
Formulate a query
53
Execute search
55
Extract information
57
Reflectiteratestop
58
Foundations for personal information infrastructures Informationseeking knowledge skills and attitudes
61
General cognitive facility
62
Domain expertise
66
System expertise
67
Informationseeking expertise
68
Patterns strategies tactics and moves
71
Analytical search strategies
76
Online search tactics
81
Searching fulltext online databases
83
Naive models of information seeking
85
Novice users of bibliographic search systems
86
Novice users of systems containing primary information
89
Lessons learned from novice users of primary search systems
98
Browsing strategies
100
Information retrieval techniques and mechanisms to support browsing
135
Designing support for browsing A research and development perspective
139
Representations
140
Mechanisms for managing representations
147
Probes
148
Zooms and pans
150
Filters and templates
152
A geometric metaphor
155
Browsing and humancomputer interaction
157
Design perspective for supporting informationseeking strategies
160
The continuing evolution of information seeking
162
Physical consequences of information in electronic form
163
Intellectual consequences of information in electronic form
167
Constraints and challenges for continued evolution
174
Intellectual property authority and copyright
175
Social and political constraints and challenges
178
Subject access and information problems
179
Human nature
181
Evolution and mutation
183
Future directions and conclusion
185
Communities of perspective and interdisciplinarity
187
What kinds of information environments do we want?
189
Multimedia knowledge bases
191
Intelligent agents
192
Implants ubiquitous computing and humanmachine symbiosis
193
Conclusion
195
Notes
197
References
201
Index
215
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