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Archive for the ‘Information Seeking’ Category

New Book: The Google Generation: Are ICT Innovations Changing Information Seeking Behaviour?

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Here’s news of a new 200 page book from the UK that will be released at the end of this month.

Authors: Barrie Gunter, Ian Rowlands and David Nicholas

+ provides a one of the most comprehensive analyses yet on the evolving nature of information search behaviour
+ combines a review of a wide range of international research evidence combined with original, cutting edge research
+ directed towards industry end-users and policy makers as well as academics with shared scholarly interests
+ presents a distinctive generation-based analysis of information search behaviours
+ identifies the complexity of digital divides and shows that age-related differences in use of new information and communications technologies are more sophisticated than previously realized.

The Google Generation examines original and secondary research evidence from international sources to determine whether there is a younger generation of learners who are adopting different styles of information search behaviour from older generations as a function of their patterns of use of online technologies. The book addresses the questions: might the widespread availability and use of search engines, such as Google, give rise to a different type of scholar who seeks out and utilises online information sources and thereby develops a different orientation to learning from older generations whose information seeking practices became established initially in the offline world.

More about the book along with brief author bios here.

Here’s a price comparison table with the cost of the book from Amazon U.S., Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, and Buy.com. For those of you who work in a library perhaps the person/people responsible for this subject area is planning on getting the book. Here’s its Amazon U.S. page.

Posted in Information Seeking, Search News, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »

UK: Making Research Easier to Find and Access

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

From the Announcement:

A JISC funded study is making recommendations to help people find university research outputs through better integration of library catalogues, research repositories and other university systems.

The JISC-funded ‘Online catalogue and repository interoperability study’ carried out by the Centre for Digital Library Research at the University of Strathclyde suggests that [our emphasis] although there is overlap between the types of information resources recorded in library catalogues and repositories, these overlaps are rarely apparent to the information seeker. This is because both types of system need to be searched separately as there is no interlinking.

Barriers between systems arise not only for technical reasons but also because they are often based in different departments of the university.

Practical advice for universities looking to make improvements in this area include:

+ Improving co-ordination between the departments responsible for institutional information systems to reduce duplication of effort and increase the efficiency of workflows

+ Making it clear to the information seeker what types of information the library catalogue and the digital repository each cover

+ Describing the same types of resources consistently in the library catalogue and digital repository

+ Improving the consistency and quality of subject descriptors, classification and author naming in digital repositories and using the same standards for these as the library catalogue as far as possible

Much More in the Complete Announcement

The complete report: Online catalogue and interoperability study is available here.

Source: JISC

See Also: Personalisation Allows Researchers to Create Online Bibliographies
A new interface to of Copac is available for all to use.

{It’s] a freely-available, merged online library catalogue that allows you to easily search the UK’s national library catalogues as well as many major academic and specialist libraries at the same time.

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

A Look at Cyberchondria

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Did you know that cyberchondria is an actual term?

From the Article:

Cyberchondria, loosely defined as the baseless fueling of fears and anxiety about common health symptoms due to Internet research, or, as I like to think of it, Googling oneself into a state of absolute, clinical hysteria over every last pain, itch and strange freckle on your body.

The article also includes a link to a 2008 paper from Microsoft Research: “Cyberchondria: Studies of the Escalation of Medical Concerns in Web Search (36 pages; PDF).”

The article continues with an analysis of the results presented in the paper and an interview with one of the authors.

Source: Washington Post

Posted in Information Literacy, Information Seeking | No Comments »

New Research Paper from Stanford InfoLab: A Dynamic Navigation Guide for Webpages

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Ed. Note: One thing that we used to do more of on ResourceShelf was to occasionally link to new and hopefully interesting research papers that we came across . Granted, the papers could sometimes get very technical (even for the editors) but those readers who could read the technical content appreciated the material while non-techies could get a good idea about the research by reading the abstract and usually the first several paragraphs of the paper. So, let’s restart this feature again with a new paper the InfoLab at Stanford Univesity.

A Dynamic Navigation Guide for Webpages (4 pages; PDF)
by Jawed Karim and Ioannis Antonellis and Varun Ganapathi and Hector Garcia-Molina
Note: This version of the paper has been submitted for publication

Navigating websites is often a frustrating process: Website visitors, despite their widely varying and individual information-seeking needs, must contend with static, general-purpose link structures that have been set in place by website owners. Because many visitors tend to browse for the same content, they are individually repeating the same navigation activity. Visitors would benefit from being able to take advantage of the collective search and discovery work that has already been performed by other visitors. Although many attempts have been made to improve website navigation by tapping into the “wisdom of the crowds”, the currently available approaches suffer from maintenance, usability, and user interface integration issues. We present a navigation guide for websites that provides visitors with helpful suggestions based on their browsing activity and the browsing activity of prior, similar visitors. Our navigation guide does not require any downloads, can be easily added to websites by website owners, and automatically remains up-to-date.

Sections of the Paper Include:

+ Introduction
+ Current Methods
+ The Wisdom of Crowds
+ A Dynamic Navigation Guide
+ How it Works
+ Related Work
+ Conclusion and Future Work

Source: Stanford InfoLab

Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Seeking, Social Media, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

UK: Interim Findings from Study Looking at Information-Seeking Behaviour of Generation Y Doctoral Students

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Interim findings of major study of doctoral researchers indicate urgent need for libraries and universities to develop their understanding of ‘Generation Y’

From the News Release/Summary:

Emerging findings from a major three-year research study into the information-seeking behaviour of doctoral students have highlighted the need for far greater understanding of the generation born between 1982 and 1994 – commonly dubbed Generation Y.

Researchers of Tomorrow was commissioned by the British Library and JISC to establish a benchmark for research behaviour, against which future generations can be measured – and also to provide guidance for librarians and information specialists on how best to meet the research needs of Generation Y scholars.

The longitudinal study will be supported by a number of surveys to establish the wider context of the doctoral research landscape. The first of these surveys has just been completed; it surveyed a representative sample of all doctoral students in the UK and yielded a number of significant interim findings.

+ Information format. Three quarters of Generation Y students – more than those in any other age group – found the information they sought in an e-journal article.

+ Emergent technology. Only a small proportion of respondents (10-30%) in any age group say they use ‘emergent technology’ – such as wikis, virtual research environments, social networking and other Web 2.0 applications – in their research, Of those that do use them, more generally find them useful in their research than not.

+ Help and advice. Fewer Generation Y students than other age groups say they regularly use library staff support to find research resources (11% of Generation Y compared to an average of 17% for other age groups), or take advice from subject specialist librarians (4% compared to 9% average). More Generation Y respondents (46%) than any other age group turn to their fellow students and/or supervisors for support in using emergent technologies.

+ Location of work. Compared to other age groups, more Generation Y researchers work from a dedicated or shared office space (or laboratory or studio) (40%), than work from their own home (39%).

[Snip]

Joanna Newman, the British Library’s Head of Higher Education, said, “The interim findings of the Researchers of Tomorrow study provide a fascinating snapshot of current research behaviour of doctoral students. [Our emphasis] It’s perhaps surprising that so few researchers in the 21-27 range really use the wide range of Web 2.0 applications for research or collaborative working. And when it comes to emergent technology, they’re more likely to seek the advice of their peers or supervisors than librarians or information specialists – a finding that could suggest a need for professionals to rethink how best to deliver advice and support in this area.”

More in the News Release/Summary

Source: The British Library

Posted in Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Is that Really Factual?: Focus on Healthcare Reform—Don’t Believe Everything You Read

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

In her latest Newslink Spotlight, Information Today’s NewsBreaks Editor, Paula Hane, takes a look at several resources that can help you verify and “fact check” stories being discussed or debated in the news. Hane’s is the healthcare debate in this article.

The first service mentioned is FactCheck.org, a non-partisan and non-profit site/service from the University of Pennsylvania where journalists and others do the fact checking.

Paula puts it this way:

As a nonpartisan, nonprofit “consumer advocate” for voters, FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. It monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases. Its goals are to apply the best practices of both journalism and scholarship and to increase public knowledge and understanding. It’s definitely a good site to know about when the fur is flying over important issues such as healthcare reform.

The article goes on to discuss a similar service from the St. Petersburg Times named PoliFact

Reporters and editors from the Times fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists, and interest groups and rate them on a Truth-O-Meter.

The article then provides several sites that focus specifically on the healthcare debate including:

Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a grass roots effort and Fix Health Care Policy from the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation

The article concludes by offering even more links and resources.

Much Much More in the Complete Article

Access FactCheck.org

Access Access PoliFact.org

Access HealthCareNow

Access FixHealth Care Policy

Source: Information Today

Posted in Access to Information, Information Literacy, Information Seeking | No Comments »

NIH Wants to Learn More About Consumer Health Information Interests and Behaviors for Seeking and Using Health Information

Monday, September 28th, 2009

From the Federal Register Announcement (PDF):

President Obama issued a directive to all Federal agencies calling for greater transparency, public participation, and collaboration. In response to this Directive, and in keeping with the work that has already been done by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to encourage public input and provide science-based health resources and science information to the public, NIH posts this Request for Information (RFI) to offer a new public input opportunity. [Our Emphasis] The RFI will provide insight and better understanding of the health information needs and information-seeking behaviors of NIH health consumer audiences. Information gathered will assist the agency in developing and disseminating health, medical, and scientific information to a broader variety of audiences. The agency anticipates using new outreach strategies and tools, from community level outlets to Internet-based social media. Members of the public as well as organizations are invited and encouraged to participate in this public input opportunity.

[Snip]

The Request for Information (RFI) serves as a vehicle to obtain public comments on how NIH can best address communication challenges and requirements for the 21st century in the face of increased demands and shrinking resources. The purpose of the RFI is to obtain information aimed at helping the NIH strengthen short- and long-term communications strategies while identifying cost-effective, meritorious, innovative, and legally sanctioned methods and outlets for disseminating health information to the public. Specifically, the RFI seeks information on the following:
+ The current state and range of health information-seeking behaviors and trends;
+ The range of health information of interest to the public;
+ How the public accesses and uses health information; and
+ The barriers that might impede NIH’s ability to communicate with health consumers.

Responses will be accepted through December 30, 2009. Please limit responses to the maximum number of words indicated for each response.

The complete RFI with a complete set of directions will be posted here in the next few days.

Source: Federal Register / National Institutes of Health
Hat Tip: M.Z.

Posted in Government Documents and Political Information, Information Literacy, Information Policy, Information Seeking, Search News, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

A Discussion on Information Seeking and Gathering

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Not from an information or library science journal but this time from Slate.

From the Article:

Seeking. You can’t stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble.

Source: Slate

Posted in Information Seeking | No Comments »

Paper –Librarians in the Hall: Instructional Outreach in Campus Residences

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

Librarians in the Hall: Instructional Outreach in Campus Residences

There is an old proverb, “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain.” It can be a challenge to reach out to incoming undergraduate students who are often overwhelmed by the high expectations of scholarship at the college level and the complexities of the modern information environment. Unconventional and creative approaches are needed to reach millennial learners where they are, both physically, in terms of where they reside on campus, and pedagogically, by employing innovative and engaging teaching methods that they can appreciate and understand. In the fall of 2007, two librarians with rather unique positions at Purdue University coordinated, developed, and implemented an instructional pilot program to reach out to and engage undergraduate students. Strategic partnerships among librarians, residence hall staff, faculty fellows, and the students themselves led to effective and well-attended educational sessions that were conducted in the study lounges of campus residence halls and addressed major concepts pertaining to research, information literacy, and critical thinking. This peer-reviewed article is based on the poster and report archived at http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/lib_research/88/.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 532 KB)

Source: Purdue e-Pubs (Catherine F. Riehle, Michael Witt)

Posted in Education, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship, Papers and Presentations | No Comments »

UK: Working Paper on Scholarly Digital Use and Information Seeking Behaviour in Business and Economics

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Some research from the United Kingdom.

From a Blog Posting:

Only tentative and draft conclusions are offered here because the study is ongoing and more data are to be evaluated.

However, on the basis of the data we have evaluated it is clear that Business/Economics stands out in regard to e-book use in that:

1. these subjects are major and significant users of e-books in that they view them more, spend longer viewing titles and undertake much busier and intensive sessions

2. their e-book users tend to search off campus and are more likely to access the books via VLEs

3. a high proportion of e-book use comes from the newer universities (this is true for other subjects too)

In regard to e-journals, where a good deal more data evaluation has to be completed, it appears that Economists:

1. are significant users, especially so the ones from universities with big business schools

2. tend to search more out of hours and on weekends

3. have a strong preference for tables of contents and abstracts

4. read relatively low impact factor journals and have a tendency to favour current material”

Access the Complete Paper (38 pages; PDF)

Author: David Nicholas
Source: CIBER & JISC

Posted in Business and Economics, Information Seeking, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »

Information Literacy Seven Corners: Improving instruction by reviewing how librarians, faculty culture, professional literature, technology, and today’s college students converge

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

From the Abstract:

This article reviews library and education literature, as well as the author’s personal observation of undergraduate information literacy (IL) instruction sessions, and provides a range of ideas and suggestions for ways in which librarians can increase the effectiveness of IL instruction sessions. The author asserts that there are five major influences that present challenges and opportunities to librarians who wish to increase authentic collaboration with faculty for course-integrated instruction that more fully addresses the higher-thinking skills true information literacy requires. In today’s world of expanded electronic access to information and the impact ubiquitous Internet searching has had on students entering or returning to post-secondary education, new strategies must be employed to facilitate instruction that goes beyond procedural skills – the conceptual aspects of information literacy and critical thinking must come to the forefront of library and classroom instruction.

Access the Full Text (Preprint)

Source: Library Journal (via E-LIS)

Posted in Information Literacy, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

More Are Searching the Web for Medical Advice

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

From an Article:

The number of adults who turn to the Internet for health information has nearly doubled in the past two years, from 31% to 60%, according to a study. That puts the Internet in a tie for third place (with books and print materials) as the source adults most often turn to for health information.

At the top, 86% of those surveyed say they most often consult a health care professional, and 68% say they consult their family or friends first.

Source: USA Today

Posted in Information Seeking | No Comments »

The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms (PDF; 2.2 MB)

Unless you work for or own an online business, chances are you’ve never heard the terms “search engine optimization” (SEO) and “search engine marketing” (SEM). Yet these two phrases—SEO (the effort by site owners to get their website ranked higher by search engines) and SEM (the use of paid advertising to gain prominent placement on search engines) are increasingly important vocabulary for businesses that seek to prosper on the web. Unfortunately, legitimate businesses are not the only ones gaining fluency with this new language.

The scammers—from solo operators to organized criminals—have quickly realized that the same search engines that enable legitimate businesses to reach more consumers can also be used by criminals to separate more victims from more of their money.

This paper examines a new phenomenon—the use of search engines as a conduit for profit-driven hackers—by analyzing the risk of searching for more than 2,000 of the most popular words and phrases (“keywords”) used in search engines in 2008. From “Jonas Brothers tickets” to “game cheats” to “Viva la Vida lyrics,” these keywords represent a broad slice of what search expert John Battelle calls our “database of intentions.”

Along with our “intentions,” this database also reveals how much risk we expose ourselves to each and every time we put our favorite search engines to use. How much risk? For some keywords like “popular screensavers” and “descargar google” and certain of their resulting pages, the risk can be pervasive— 75% or more results (three out of four) can lead to increased web security risk. This should not be surprising to observers of security trends. Since hacking for fame has given way to hacking for profit, malicious players have grown increasingly sophisticated in their ability to find large pools of potential victims. By measuring the relative risk of popular search terms, this study confirms that scammers continue to target the largest pools of victims.

But this study also found some interesting evidence to the contrary. Previous McAfee® studies of web safety have shown about 4% of sites to be risky. This is a broad measure of the overall risk we face when we use the web. By contrast, the average risk level of all results pages we studied was just 1.7%. This study is broad and directional. New tools and research methods need to be deployed to allow us to better understand the mechanics of how search is being misused. We hope this study helps pave the way for other studies that take on these important questions.

Source: McAfee

Hat tip: DG

Posted in Information Seeking, Papers and Presentations, Search News, Source File, Technology and Internet, Web Search | No Comments »

Issue 59 (April, 2009) of Ariadne is Now Available Online

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Direct to Full Table of Contents

Articles Include:

+ e-Framework Implements New Workplan
Ian Dolphin and Phil Nicholls describe recent and forthcoming developments from the e-Framework Partnership for Education and Research.

+ A Support Framework for Remote Workers
Marieke Guy follows up on her two previous articles for Ariadne with an overview of an evolving structure to provide consistent support to UKOLN colleagues who work remotely.

+ To VRE or Not to VRE?: Do South African Malaria Researchers Need a Virtual Research Environment?
Heila Pienaar and Martie van Deventer identify the requirements of a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for malaria researchers in South Africa.

+ Spinning a Semantic Web for Metadata: Developments in the IEMSR
Emma Tonkin and Alexey Strelnikov reflect on the experience of developing components for the Information Environment Metadata Schema Registry.

+ Three Perspectives on the Evolving Infrastructure of Institutional Research Repositories in Europe
Marjan Vernooy-Gerritsen, Gera Pronk and Maurits van der Graaf report on the most significant results from two surveys conducted to provide an overview of repositories with research output in the European Union.

+ Making Digital Cultures: Access, Interactivity, and Authenticity
Lina Coelho finds this study of the cultural terrain of modern institutions, where digital and analogue objects co-exist, both challenging and thought-provoking.

+ Book Review: Managing Electronic Government Information in Libraries: Issues and Practices
Sylvie Lafortune reviews a book which addresses the following question: From e-government to t-government. How will libraries keep up?

+ Reader Development in Practice: bringing literature to readers
Abigail Luthmann examines a varied collection of approaches to the topic of reader development.

+ Sketching Tomorrow
Emma Tonkin takes a look at an ambitious work on the relationship of modern society to information and communication technologies and observes more sins of omission than commission.

+ More Content Available Including Conference Reports

Source: Ariadne / UKOLN

Posted in Cataloging and Metadata, Info Management and Retrieval, Information Policy, Information Seeking, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

Information-seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers

Saturday, May 16th, 2009

by Jamali, Hamid R. and Nicholas, David

From the Abstract:

The study examines two aspects of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers including methods applied for keeping up-to-date and methods used for finding articles. The relationship between academic status and research field of users with their information seeking behaviour was investigated. Methodology/approach – Data were gathered using a questionnaire survey of PhD students and staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at University College London; 114 people (47.1 per cent response rate) participated in the survey. Findings – The study reveals differences among subfields of physics and astronomy in terms of information-seeking behaviour, highlights the need for and the value of looking at narrower subject communities within disciplines for a deeper understanding of the information behaviour of scientists. Originality/value – The study is the first study to deeply investigate intradisciplinary dissimilarities of information-seeking behaviour of scientists in a discipline. It is also an up-to-date account of information seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers.

Direct to Article (PDF)

Source: Aslib Proceedings, 2008

Posted in Information Seeking | No Comments »

Lack of information access control affects search activity

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

From the Article:

Professionals in healthcare and public sector organisations are unable to quickly, easily and accurately locate the data they need because of IT directors’ fears over data security when providing staff access to necessary information, a survey reveals.

Information risk management software provider Recommind’s research shows that 94% of healthcare IT directors and a further 73% of public sector institutions cite data security fears as key concern when providing employees with the information required for their day to day jobs.

These concerns have led organisations to rely on inadequate legacy search systems which significantly fail to meet the sophisticated data requirements of the modern worker. This significantly hinders productivity and efficiency and can have serious implications for the service they provide to citizens, according to Recommind. Search solutions currently used by health and public sector organisations are outdated and ineffective.

Source: Information World Review

Posted in Information Seeking | No Comments »

Research Paper: Learning How: The Search for Craft Knowledge on the Internet

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

From the Abstract:

Communicating the subtleties of a craft technique, like putting a zipper into a garment or throwing a clay pot, can be challenging even when working side by side. Yet How- To content—including text, images, animations, and videos—is available online for a wide variety of crafts. We interviewed people engaged in various crafts to investigate how online resources contributed to their craft practice. We found that participants sought creative inspiration as well as technical clarification online. In this domain, keyword search can be difficult, so supplemental strategies are used. Participants sought information iteratively, because they often needed to enact their knowledge in order to evaluate it. Our description of people learning how allows us to elaborate on existing understandings of information-seeking behavior by considering how search originates and is evaluated in knowledge domains involving physical objects and physical processes.

Direct to Full Text Article (10 pages; PDF)

Source: Yahoo Research

Posted in Information Seeking | No Comments »

The April, 2009 Issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association is Now Available Online

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Direct to Table of Contents (via Pubmed Central)

Articles include:

+ A case study: using social tagging to engage students in learning Medical Subject Headings

+ Search strategies to identify information on adverse effects: a systematic review

+ Development of a new academic digital library: a study of usage data of a core medical electronic journal collection

+ A bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature on Internet, video games, and cell phone addiction

+ The great contribution: Index Medicus, Index-Catalogue, and IndexCat

+ Web usability testing with a Hispanic medically underserved population

+ Disappearing act: decay of uniform resource locators in health care management
journals

+ Medical librarians’ uses and perceptions of social tagging

+ Embedded librarians: one library’s model for decentralized service

and Much More.

Posted in Info Management and Retrieval, Information Literacy, Information Science, Information Seeking, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Archive for the ‘Information Seeking’ Category

New Book: The Google Generation: Are ICT Innovations Changing Information Seeking Behaviour?

UK: Making Research Easier to Find and Access

A Look at Cyberchondria

UK: Interim Findings from Study Looking at Information-Seeking Behaviour of Generation Y Doctoral Students

Is that Really Factual?: Focus on Healthcare Reform—Don’t Believe Everything You Read

NIH Wants to Learn More About Consumer Health Information Interests and Behaviors for Seeking and Using Health Information

A Discussion on Information Seeking and Gathering

Paper –Librarians in the Hall: Instructional Outreach in Campus Residences

UK: Working Paper on Scholarly Digital Use and Information Seeking Behaviour in Business and Economics

Information Literacy Seven Corners: Improving instruction by reviewing how librarians, faculty culture, professional literature, technology, and today’s college students converge

More Are Searching the Web for Medical Advice

The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms

Issue 59 (April, 2009) of Ariadne is Now Available Online

Information-seeking behaviour of physicists and astronomers

Lack of information access control affects search activity

Research Paper: Learning How: The Search for Craft Knowledge on the Internet

The April, 2009 Issue of the Journal of the Medical Library Association is Now Available Online

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