A Final Word

Tour Information

We didn't have a lot of suggestions for changing our tour, except for Teri's question about time and timing. Alex and I decided to address this issue in our discussion. Time and timing certainly could fit in with Dunne's phases of information needs of battered women - depending on the situation. The information seeking behavior of battered women is more situational than anything else. I brought this up in the presentation, but I will reiterate my point here. For example, one woman may want to plan her escape and recovery from abuse in the beginning and may want to be in a state of information overload. On the other hand, a different woman may not be ready to learn about finding her own apartment and may just want to get out of the abusive relationship for now. Depending on the person and the situation, women may/may not be ready for information at various times/phases in the information seeking process.

My Final Thoughts on Class

This semester I've been introduced to some unique user perspectives that I've never thought of before. Taking an entire semester to study the information needs of the less popular information poor was quite valuable. In most of the other classes, we focus on the information needs of the majority; and the majority is quite overstudied. Unfortunately, those with unique needs are in the minority and information professionals may inadverdently ignore their needs. This class has taught me to think about the needs of every user. If we never sit down and try to meet the needs of those who don't use our systems, they never will and our users will stay the same; because of this, our systems and our technologies will not grow. This is something that most be avoided; innovation is critical and to be innovative in the information seeking field we must design systems around each individual user. We should step out of our comfort zones!

Week 14 Tour Update

For our tour this week, we sat back and waited for our classmates to comment on our presentation. Thus far, our comments have been very positive. Alex and I have included everything we wanted to include in our tour, hopefully without causing our own information overload!

This was actually the hardest part of our tour; because we were overloaded with information it was really easy to overload others. Even though we wanted to convey this sentiment, we did not want to spread on the incredible amount of disorganized information to others! Having said that, for the most part it was easy to organize our presentation because we modeled after a scientific research paper with an introduction, a literature review, methodology, analysis, discussion, conclusion, and even future work. The hard part to organize was our 'journey' because it was a confusing one! We decided the best way to discuss the places we went and the things we found by discussing each one individually in the order we visited them. By illustrating this with photos, I think our presnetation is easy to follow and enjoyable - who doesn't like looking at pictures? :)

Week 13 Tour Update

This past week Alex and I put together our presentation and posted it online to the discussion board. We went through some interesting trials as we put everything together ...

One interesting story is our quest for the Family Violence Prevention Center's website. We were working on our project in the SILS lab and were trying to remember the FVPC's site; the problem was we didn't have our pamphlets with us so we were trying to recall it from memory - we both knew the site existed, or at least it was advertised, so we tried our first guess: fvpc.org. This brought us to a church's website so we Googled 'family violence prevention center of chapel hill, nc'. This brought up lots of opportunities to volunteer with the center, but no information on the center or its services.

Since we couldn't find ANYTHING we decided to call them (thanks to Google maps we had the number). The staff member who answered the phone informed me that the site was fvpc.org; when I told her we had tried that and it didn't work she replied with "let me try it, maybe my Internet here is different". Obviously, she also got the church site; she then told me that they had just switched technology coordinators and that perhaps the site was down and would be back soon but the address was definitely fvpc.org; well, this obviously wasn't true. Later, Alex and I found their site in our notes 'fvpcoc.org'. It was still interesting that we very much could NOT find their site, even when we asked the organization. Interestingly enough, fvpcoc.org is a very good site with lots of helpful information - if you can find it.

One thing we really wanted to get across and focus on was our actual, physical tour. We wanted to stress the 'information overload' aspect as well as the fact that we didn't really know where to start or where to go for what information (besides the Rape Crisis Center, which is obvious). We tried to stress this in our presentation through pictures ... I hope you enjoy it!

Week 12 Tour Update

Just to keep the blog going week to week ...

Alex and I spent the afternoon re-visiting our tour stops:

1. Carolina Women's Center
2. The Family Violence Prevention Center
3. Orange County Rape Crisis Center
4. The Women's Center of Chapel Hill

We went around and took pictures for our presentation and collected any new information we found. This week we found information on domestic violence at The Women's Center for South Asians. This was interesting because the only two languages we've seen have been either English or Spanish.

We are continuing to learn new things about a very unique group of users - battered women.

Scrapbook - Unit 11

11.08.07

Oftentimes I feel as though there is a disconnect between what we learn and discuss in class versus what we can realistically do when we join the 'practical' world. It is rare that we read a study that incorporates the working world; instead, researchers tend to survey students or other academics - most likely because this is an easy audience to come across. However, as someone who wants to work and use the knowledge I have gained at SILS in a practical sense, I think it would be most beneficial to me to read studies on practitioners.

When I wrote my undergraduate thesis at SILS, I want to discuss my qualitative methods from a feminist standpoint - i.e., using feminist research methods. (I used a hybrid study of both quantitative and qualitative measures; I also took research methods both in SILS and the Women's Studies department). I was discouraged from saying I was analyzing my qualitative data from a feminist standpoint because 'certain IS researchers' would see my research as non-scientific and thus, invalid. Likewise, when I took research methods as a graduate student, we were told that quantitative is considered 'hard' science and qualitative methods are considered 'soft' science. Having done both, I would argue that neither route is easy by any means and I actually think that quantitative data is much easier to manipulate than qualitative data. I can manipulate statistics and no one would question it - but you can't deny would people report in interviews or ethnographic studies. Judging academics based on social or traditional sciences isn't fair to either discipline and truly limits the ways in which we can expand our research. To grow as a field, we must be open to the ideas of others, which is what I believe Dervin was trying to tell us in her essay.

I really enjoyed reading the article by Gerber and Grunes. This seems to be one of the most user-focused plans I have encountered in IS research. Obviously we always discuss taking the user into account, but this is the first practical implementation I've seen that truly uses the user's needs in building a system. At the end of the article they mention that people made comments like 'this is similar to how we find solutions in books' - statements like this illustrate the fact that it is not always a good idea to bring in something totally new; sometimes it is better to improve a system the user is already familiar with, like browsing in books.

Their method of designing the system is what truly intrigued me. They outline five steps:

1. "Brainstorm design concepts,

2. Develop an initial prototype that could be demonstrated to focus groups of art directors,
3. Refine the prototype based on focus group comments,
4. Conduct user testing to establish usability, productivity measurements and determine user attitudes about the program, and
5. Iteratively refine and test the user interface." (p. 161)
   

I think this is an excellent model for designing systems and interfaces; having a concise, formal design process is key to coming out with a good end-product. And if you aren't designing the system/interface for the users, what's the point? All in all, Gerber and Grunes do an excellent job of illustrating how the design process can and should be built around the needs of the user.

Update on our Tour

I think Alex and I have already found many gaps that need to bridged for our tour that directly relates to joining the needs of the designer to the needs of the user. Last week, we took a physical tour of all of the Women's Centers in Chapel Hill and were immediately overwhelmed with information. The problem with the battered women is that it's hard enough for them to go out in search of information to get help, but once they hit a road block along the way they become frustrated and oftentimes stop seeking help via information. The reason so many women hit road blocks is because they don't know which Women's Center to go to for which services. Not to reveal too much about our tour before you are all dazzled with our presentation :), but we were immediately confronted with the problem of which Women's Center to go to for all of the many information needs that battered women are confronted with. The reason for this problem, we believe, is that most non-profit community centers (Women's Centers for instance) are under-funded and we have been told that the first budget item cut is outreach services. Without outreach services, the user (battered women) will never know where to go or how to find their information.

Tour Update - Week 10

Now that Alex and I have done a good bit of background research on our tour topic, we have learned so much about the information needs of this particular population. One of the most important lessons has been that every woman, in every situation, is unique because of the emotions and state of mind that come with this environment; thus her search needs are also unique. This article by Jennifer Dunne was particularly useful because it analyses the needs of battered women at various places in abuse (i.e., the beginning, help seeking, going back/staying out, etc.).

Dunne, J. E. (2002). "Information seeking and use by battered women: A 'person-in-progressive-situations' approach". In Library and Information Science Research, V. 24, p. 343-355.

Dunne uses Allen's person-in-situation model (see citation below) which looks at how people in certain situations, and in various stages of these situations, seek information. Dunne says that the information seeking context here is defined by what she terms 'personal and situational factors' (emotions and state of mind or mental health) as well as the individual woman's response to the situation. Dunne's article basically takes Allen's approach and analyses other articles on the needs of battered women. The author looks at the various stages the abused woman goes through: the need for emotional support, securing help and a plan to escape, securing safety and shelter, and follow-up emotional support. Her conclusions are that the information needs of this group of people changes throughout each of these stages AND is dependent upon the individual's situation and emotional response. For public libraries, Dunne reports that they should serve as an information central, so to speak, for these women. Libraries should have information useful to women in every stage of this situation. They should also coordinate these services with organizations in the community who help battered women: social workers, police officers, lawyers, women's centers, etc.

Citation for the theoretical basis of Dunne's article:

Allen, B. (1996). Information needs: A person-in-situation approach. In P. Vakkari, R. Savolainen, & B. Dervin (Eds.), Information seeking in context: Proceedings of an International Conference on Research in Information Needs, Seeking and Use in Different Contexts (pp. 111-122). Tampere, Finland: Taylor Graham.

The person-in-situation model was used in this article and obviously reflects a situational perspective. However, I think this model directly relates to the Information Use Environments (IUE) because of the situation. What I mean is that these women are in very unique environments, one of abuse, and therefore, their access to not only information, but emotional support and safety may be very limited. Their environment is what forms their situations. Using this model shows the information professional just how unique this particular set of information seekers are, and points out all of the obstacles blocking access to information for this group.

Scrapbook - Unit 10

11.02.06

Taylor's article on Information Use Environments does bring up a very appealing approaching to designing information systems. Taking a look at the user based on where they are coming from in their searching seems to be a good idea but I can imagine the difficulties one would face in applying this in a real world setting. Where do you draw the line for a group of people? For engineers there are computer, network, and mechanical - these groups certainly have differing information needs, is it fair to generalize them all in one group? Where do you draw the line?

I do applaud the idea that everyone has unique information needs based on not just their environment, but their education, their situation, among other factors. And while it is not possible to please everyone and perfectly meet their information needs, I think that these differences must be taken into consideration when designing information systems.

Hershberger's article shows how different groups of people who aren't typical information seekers need information. I think article's like Hershberger's and Dewdney and Harris' on battered women are very important because they bring up the non-typical searcher. Most of the articles we read are either about the medical world (which I'm suspecting is because there is lots of money in that field) or the corporate world. This reminds me of Chatman's study of the information poor - those that are not typical information seekers and may not have unlimited access the way other groups do but who have very unique information needs.

Battered women and abused children are interesting groups to study because of their unique situations. Both groups may not have access to the information they need to get help, find safety, support, or simply reassurance. If libraries began keeping information needed by these groups perhaps more people (women and children) would get the help they need. Studying specific, non-typical domains needs to be done more in the LIS world; we typically seem to study those that use our information systems - wouldn't it broaden our user group (and our own perspectives) to bridge out and try to help those not using our systems?

Tour Information - Battered Women

After discussing tour interests with Alex, we have decided to explore the information needs of battered women who haven't sought help from shelters. This issue is hard to research, as these women aren't always identifiable because they don't seek information. The question is, if they want help, where are they looking? What information do they need to get help? This particular article was recommended by Dr. Solomon and discusses women who receive help and then go back to the abuser.

Baker, P. L. (1997). And I went back: Battered women's negotiation of choice. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 26(1), 55-74.

Baker conducted sixteen in-depth interviews with women who left their abusive spouses and then returned to them - which is a very different audience. She discusses how the system failed these women and how their information needs were inadequately met. For various reasons, the needs of these sixteen women were not met the 'script' as Baker calls it that lawyers, social workers, and police officers use to help these women.

I think this article is very useful to studying the information needs of battered women; by studying how the system does not help women, we can figure out what to do to make the system better. Sometimes studying the unmet needs gives us more insight into the information seeker than studying how systems currently meet the needs of users.

Scrapbook - Unit 9

Reading the second-half of the 'time and timing' article brought a lot of thoughts to mind. One of the participants in the organization described the 'old' information as 'slimy' in that it did the members of the organization no good and actually slowed them down in the WPP. Rarely do we, as information professionals, think about information gathering over time. It's true - as we collect more data, we gather more knowledge and therefore our information needs on a single subject change over time. In the beginning of the information seeking process, we have a limited amount of information on a topic - otherwise, we wouldn't be searching for more information. As time progresses and we do more information seeking, we (as information seekers) gain a certain amount of knowledge about the topic we are researching. This knowledge results in some information being of no use to us as information seekers and we need a higher quality or a higher level of information. I have a feeling that the group in Solomon's article did too much information gathering in the beginning so that by the third quarter of Year 1, they were dealing with old information - information that they no longer need. This in effect, lost them a significant amount of time - they lost the time they spent gathering information in the beginning, going through the 'slimy' information, and then gathering more information! While planning is critical to planning projects, we sometimes must remember that project planning could very well cause project creep.

Solomon also mentions that organizations gather more information than they use; then turn around and ask for more. I think big corporations fall prey to 'too much information'. I had an internship at a fortune 500 a couple of summers ago and I got to participate in our bi-monthly meetings where gathering too much information and passing it off to others was all too common. I think that managers should realize that while it is important to share information with co-workers, they do not need to know everything nor do they need to be overwhelmed with information. I'm not saying that managers should hide things from employees; rather, they should only give them what they need to know. I think the employees would be more satisfied in the end and they wouldn't waste 3 hours every other week at a very long, sometimes unnecessary, meeting!

I think when it comes to information and time, the information seeker (and the information professional) needs to take level of knowledge and accumulation of knowledge over time into account. By adding the 'time' perspective to our initial information gathering, we may see early on in the Work Planning Process that this does not necessarily need to occur in the beginning! I also think that taking into account knowledge levels of the information seeker, information professionals can pass on a higher level of information, thus better satisfying the needs of the information seeker.

This issue ties into a concept I explored in Dr. Losee's Information Retrieval class. We were developing our 'dream search engines' without taking into account the mechanics of how to develop them (so as not to stunt our creativity). My ideal search engine would know what I'm doing a search for - work, school, or pleasure. Each of these three categories warrants a different type of knowledge - for work, I need detailed information or perhaps the answer to a very detailed question; for school, I need scholarly information; leisure searching warrants the need of very general knowledge. I think that adding time to this mix would also change how we search and the results we need. If we could design an information system that takes knowledge levels into account, I think that the profession would make a tremendous leap forward and the needs of the information seeker would be more efficiently met.

The second article we read (Solomon's Dynamics article) discussed the idea of the expert versus the novice information seeker. Showing out children's information needs change over time on a certain topic certainly illustrates how our knowledge levels increase as we gather more information. One point brought about in the 'Implications' section was something I hadn't considered but should have: not every information seeker wants or needs to become an expert - some people only need general information. For these people, the ideal system would cut out the details and give them 'Wikipedia' type knowledge - a general overview.

Understanding the current knowledge-level of the information seeker and where they are in the information seeking process would allow systems to better serve the user's information needs. Developing a system that understands this level of knowledge based on search terms and takes the knowledge level into account as it performs a search would effectively deal with changing information needs and knowledge-levels over time.

Scrapbook - Unit 8

10.12.06

The conclusions of Solomon's paper include worthy advice for all information professionals - people think of information as part of the Work Planning Process, and not its own entity the way we do. By thinking of information from the perspective of the user, we can design more effective systems. In this particular article, there seemed to be huge breakdowns in communication. As people try to make sense of the information they have, communication problems ensue. Thus, it is the job of information professionals to address these communication needs.

The problem with the people in the article, it seems, was that communication was a bit too formalized for one group and too unorganized for the other. Finding somewhere in the middle would be ideal. This place would include people being comfortable enough to discuss their problems openly, while still respecting the manager's viewpoint.

By looking into the alternative social views, we can see others viewpoints. If the manager in the article had seen the viewpoint of the worker and vice versa, the team could have worked together more efficiently. From this same standpoint, information professionals can use these viewpoints to design systems.

To get at these view points we must put ourselves in the place of the information seeker and think about their perspectives. By openly analyzing the information seeking/using habits of others, we can understand their vantage points and thus become more successful as information professionals.

Discussion Board Comments on Tour Topic

Last week I read an article on the information seeking habits of women with breast cancer. This week I found an article on the information seeking habits of battered women. I know I want to do my tour on a woman-centered topic, so to speak, but I feel that the battered women perspective is so unique that I should study it more in-depth. Battered women have emotional and psychological issues that prohibit them from searching for information in the same way other information seekers do. It is because of this unique perspective that I chose my article for the week, and have decided to make my tour topic on the information seeking behavior of battered women.

Harris, R. M. (1988). RQ; the Information Needs of Battered Women. American Library Association.

Harris interviewed 40 women who used the services of a battered women's shelter. The author asked questions about where help was sought before the women left their abusive spouses and whether or not it was helpful. The conclusions were that women were not helped by the police and other authority figures (for the most part). Women did find help from friends and family (when they weren't being judgmental), social workers, the clergy, and lawyers. Each of these information resources were not always helpful and sometimes gave the women negative information that made them feel guilty. The author concluded that battered women (at least the ones in the study) did not utilize library resources; however, she suggests that libraries should market (in a sense) the books they offer on relationships and abusive spouses. She also advises that libraries create outreach programs to the people battered women contact for help so that they can send the women to the library where they can access the information they need.

I liked the way the author approached the situation. By interviewing women from a battered women's shelter she found the audience she needed. I wonder about the information needs of women who did not find the women's shelter - where are they going for help (or are they seeking help at all?) and why isn't it helpful? By expanding the sample Harris find a significant amount of information that will help abused women.

Scrapbook - Unit 7

10.5.06

I believe the way we search for information, down to what we judge as relevant, is affected by very subjective things. What I mean by this is, if Alex and I are writing a research paper on the very same topic for the very same professor, depending on our mindset that day, one of us may find one document relevant and not another. Our judgments on relevancy or even how we search for documents are affected by everything from our surroundings to what our mood is that day. Making sense of the returned documents or of the system in general, is affected by our emotional mindset - a bad mood or a good mood can change one's outlook quite easily. This doesn't even take into account our individual knowledge of the subject and how that affects the documents we retrieve. From our life experiences, every individual person has a certain amount of knowledge or opinions about certain subjects that affect how the judge documents.

I also think that knowing your personal strengths/limitations for this topic is the same as knowing your personal strengths/limitations for any other topic. It can help you grow as an information seeker - having knowledge of your biases towards information seeking lets you be aware of them, thus preventing some of the affect they have on your information seeking.

In designing any type of system I think it is important to know your audience as much as possible. If you're Google, this may just be impossible! But if you're designing an academic search engine or helping a particular person with their computer woes, you have some room for interpretation. Know who the system is defined for and why they need to use it and you can design an effective system that keeps end users happy!

DB

I posted the information below to the discussion board but felt putting it here was also appropriate.

My tour interests are the information seeking habits of the information poor. In general, how and why do people who typically don't search for information find it? And why is it that they are not typical information seekers? The article I read was on the information seeking habits of women with breast cancer - a very unique perspective from people seeking a very specific type of information. The citation is below:

Rees, C. E. and Bath, P. A. (2001). "Information-Seeking Behaviors of Women with Breast Cancer". Oncology Nursing Forum, Vol. 28, No. 5, pp. 899-907.

The authors distributed 202 surveys and held 3 discussion groups (each with 10 people) to find out how certain people sought information on breast cancer post diagnosis and why others avoided information on the topic altogether. They found that some people are information avoiders - i.e., they don't seek information for fear of worrying. Others are high-monitoring information seekers - they want every piece of information they can find in hopes of feeling in control of the cancer. And then there are the low-monitoring seekers who want enough information to feel educated and 'in the know' so to speak when dealing with doctors. Their conclusions were that information seeking is based on the individual and not on demographic information. That is to say that just because a person was in a certain age group did not mean that they necessarily would or would not seek information; rather, the need to seek information depended on the type of person they were and their past experiences.

This relates to my topic of interest because it shows that people are more than just demographics; every person has valuable life experiences that affect their information seeking behavior. For the information professional, this makes it very difficult to design systems because you have no real target audience, so to speak.

I really enjoy reading the person view of research. In most of our classes we discuss things from a systems perspective (taken the user into account when possible); but it is refreshing to learn about what the people using the system think or how and why they even use our information systems to find information.

Scrapbook - Unit 6

The evidence based practice article really seems to be talking about finding a trustworthy, relevant document. Given that they are discussing medical information trustworthiness seems to be the most important factor, followed by relevance. In my opinion, relevance is the most difficult part to define. Relevance seems to be something that affects one person at one instance in time - i.e., this document is relevant to me today, but it might not be relevant to me tomorrow nor relevant to you today. As an evidence based practitioner, the role of the professional is to provide the most current, up to date information. It is the role of the information professional to find this information and label it trustworthy or not and relevant or not.

It also seems that finding relevant EBP articles is challenging because the user (searcher, professional, etc.) should attempt to find evidence based research that is basically identical to the situation they are researching. While EBP seems like a good thing for people to implement, the most challenging aspect of the job appears to be this issue of finding research relevant to your population.

From the information on training users, it seems like they should take research methods! Learning how to justify what type of research (qualitative or quantitative) is appropriate to your user's situation is critical in finding EBP information. For information professionals, the goal is here is to tell users exactly what they need to know without causing information overload. What I gathered from this document is to give the users the facts - i.e., 'quantitative research methods are appropriate in this situation' or 'you should be looking at qualitative research to find EBP articles relevant to your situation'.

When it comes to developing my tour, the EBP information has shown be how critical it is to find relevant documents. Right now, my tour interests seem to revolve around Chatman's work - I want to learn more about the information poor. In the spirit of EBP, I will start with her research before developing my own tour. By using the research of those that have come before us, we can use their knowledge and improve our own research. EBP research on the information poor (like Chatman's article on the retirees) can support the design of my tour as well as the methods used to gather data. So as not to stay on one track, I will look outside of Chatman's research in what I call spider web form - I will start with her list of references and find other relevant articles, look through their references, etc., until I have found a balanced view and a significant amount of data on the information poor.

I read Christine Barry's article on alternative medicine. In it, she discusses the general medical profession's opinion of alternative medicine and I have first hand experience that proves her presumptions are correct. My fiancée is homeopathic and occasionally he has to have X-rays or other tests done with a Western MD because his homeopath is several hours away. The doctors here (and by here I mean Western doctors) tend to look down on homeopathy and not see it as a true way to recover from illness - in my opinion a lot of them seem to want to give EVERYONE an antibiotic. This amuses me because Mark is healthier than most people I know and he stays that way by taking care of himself (mind, body, and soul) through homeopathy. Barry discussed the difficulties in testing the effectiveness of homeopathy - these are issues that hadn't occurred to me before. Testing an outcast version of treatment in an already biased system seems to be impossible. This is unfortunate for homeopathy as a practice, as it makes it difficult for Western doctors to take it as seriously as they should. Finding a homeopathic remedy is like finding a relevant document - the results are based on individual needs.

From what I've read about EBP in theory, it was developed to keep practitioners up to date. In the healthcare industry, this is critical. With so many diseases untreatable, it is important to be able to find out what doctors are doing to treat them. Finding alternatives to traditional medicine should be a part of EBP but because of its setup is often difficult to incorporate. To this extent, if more homeopaths or alternative medicine practitioners were to get published in medical journals perhaps their practices would become more popular and accepted in the medical community.

Scrapbook - Unit 5

Research on Information Users

I thought the Free Library of Philadelphia questionnaire was an excellent survey - it was in-depth, they talked to a huge sample, and they got to the meat of what they were looking for. The data they gathered seemed necessary and efficient in meeting their needs and in extending information services to their patrons.

Surveys and data collection provide a way for organizations to learn more about who uses their services - they get data about their target audience, so to speak. I understand the need to use this data to improve services, but what about the people who don't go to the Free Library of Philadelphia or to Pret a Manger? Perhaps another way to look at information gathering is to look at who isn't using your services in order to expand your audience. These surveys could potentially give feedback to the manager on what the organization is doing well and what needs an adjustment. If they're having staff issues or systems issues, the manager can make her decisions to change the organization accordingly. Also, executives could plan for the future by knowing which direction the organization needs to go in and what other services should be offered in the future.

By asking about the effectiveness of the information systems (such as the USPS and the Library Survey did) I can judge whether or not I should make radical changes to my information system or continue to improve upon what I already have. The point of all organizations, regardless of who they are, is to keep customers happy; by analyzing customer satisfaction surveys, organizations can assess how successful they are at doing this; and, if they need improvement, they have the data that tells them how they should improve.

I think the Free Library of Philadelphia survey was the best survey out of the set. They were obviously trying to find out who came to their library, what their goals were in the library, and how effective (or not) each one of their surveys were to these patrons. I think the USPS survey should add a comments section. The most interesting open-ended survey question I have seen was on the library survey - they ask "What three things would you change about the library" - what an interesting way to get at the users perspective! It keeps them involved in the survey. For the library and the restaurant, I would like to have traffic statistics - i.e., how many people are going in and out of the organization in a day or week's time. This information would tell me when I am over- or under-staffed so that I could adjust my employees work schedules accordingly.

I prefer mostly yes/no and likert-type survey questions with one open-ended question for comment. When you're analyzing a significant amount of data, these close-ended questions are much easier to analyze. On the other hand, it's important to allow users to say what they want to say without being bound by my questions, hence the 'comments' question at the end of the survey.

I was pretty upset after reading Bauder's article - I can't believe schools allow market researchers to come and disrupt school time for research!! If I were a parent, I would be VERY upset. They're saying that they are building shows around what kids are into now, but is that really what they're doing? Aren't they essentially just marketing what they think kids want to see? What about kids with different opinions from the majority - can they not watch what they want to on TV? I do agree with the creator of Blues Clues - but I don't think it was her market research that helped her design the show, I think it was her Master's in Child Development that made Blues Clues such a success. This type of research just seems to be from a market standpoint - I just can't believe that some big television company wants to do good, not evil, with this type of information. If collection developers did this type of research, their collections would only include what's popular, and not a wide range of topics for all to enjoy. This popularity measure of information is what makes Google's PageRank mechanism so scary - if only the most popular documents in the world are returned at the top of the retrieved set how do I find rare documents? It's simple, I don't.

I think I had so many problems with this article because of the questions the researcher was asking the kids about personal life - involvement with parents, grandparents, etc. If the kids said that their parents were annoying would the network create shows that put parents down? It seems that a few years ago all of the cartoons made parents look ridiculous - how does this effect children?

Final Thoughts

I think the formal survey used by the Free Library of Philadelphia was the most useful out of this set of information - I could tell exactly what they were looking for in their questions. Nothing was vague, and every question was appropriate (unlike Nickelodeon's tactics - I still can't believe they disrupted school for market research!). I also enjoyed reading Bauersfeld and Halgren's study of how to gather data from end-users. If you are designing an interface for a specific audience, you should know what their likes and dislikes are - and they even used different tactics of getting at this information. I particularly liked their condensed ethnographic interview tactics and their interactive feature conceptualization (a la sticky notes) - this reminded me of systems analysis! Dr. Haas taught us this sticky note approach to designing systems to meet the needs of users. If people can visualize what they want and visually represent that to the designer, it seems to work a lot better than simply explaining the issue.

I also think that it is important to determine what you want to do with your information so as to determine how you want to get this information. Since Bauersfeld and Halgren were looking to design an interface for a very specific group of people, they did an in-depth study to find their information, in the short amount of time they had available. The Free Library of Philadelphia wanted to ask their many patrons questions and this best way to get information from such a large number of people is through a survey.

Different methods very much decide what type of information you get - do you want quantitative or qualitative data? Qualitative data, at least from my point of view, provides the researcher with more open-ended responses. Quantitative data is a quick way to find the specific answers you want from your users. Also, in the realm of qualitative and quantitative information there are many ways to go - ethnographic studies, an interview in your office, etc. Ethnographic studies take the most amount of time but I think provide the most valuable information. I love the way Solomon got information for his study (and not just because you're my instructor! :) ) because you really got every piece of data possible out of that group of people to fully understand their work process. Of course, time is always of the essence, and if you have a short amount of time, quantitative methods work too, you just won't receive as much honest data - by honest, I mean that surveys don't really give participants the opportunity to say exactly what they mean.

Surveys and other forms of research put the information professional in an interesting role - that of information seeker. The hardest part of this process is determining what method of research will give you the type of information you are looking for - how will you get data from your user? Qualitative methods such as interviews, ethnographic studies, and conceptualization activities allow the researcher to interact with their participants and provide the most valuable data to the researcher. Quantitative studies like surveys provide the researcher a way to get data quickly, and data that is easily and scientifically analyzed. The situation the researcher is in and the type of data they want to collect both affect what type of data collection methods are used.

Scrapbook - Unit 4.2

Even though I posted this information on Blackboard, I would like to keep it here in my scrapbook as well. Below you will find my reaction to Hartel's Serious Leisure article.

Hartel's article on 'Serious Leisure' gives a completely different perspective on information needs. The majority of the time articles researching information needs revolve around the professional or academic worlds. Hartel's article forces us to address the fact that we all have information needs in the non-professional world (i.e., our personal lives). For example, I am very interested (don't ask) in juvenile science fiction novels (in fact I would say that I'm addicted to them). I am frequently searching online for a new author or a new book series or to read what someone has written about my favorite series in this genre (it's the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld in case you were wondering). I crave information on this topic! The fact that I use Google, Barnes and Noble (both online and in person), Amazon, and the author's website are important insights into how I, as an information seeker, go about fulfilling my needs. This angle of information seeking rarely gets studies by information professionals. I think studying the information needs sought in our personal lives is well worth studying and an important topic that will help us gain more insight on the information needs of users.

The other side to this of course, is that what people search for in their leisure time is only useful to you if you're Google. Academic search engines really should not be concerned with leisure time - it's out of the scope of their purpose. Of course, it is always useful as an information professional to understand as much as possible about information seeking behavior (of any kind), so studying 'serious leisure' will only give us more information about users.


In addition to reading Hartel's article, I read one of the references from it:

Ross, C. (1999). Finding without seeking: the information encounter in the context of reading for pleasure. Information Processing and Management, 35, 783-799.

As an avid reader myself I enjoyed reading the article and learning how other people search for books. One of my favorite quotes from one of her interviewees was:

"Sometimes you have to be ready for a book. There are some books it's not your time to read, or it's not their time to be read by you. Sometimes a book just has nothing to say to you, and that's probably because you have to have had some prior experience." - p.789

It's so true! Now for my analysis:

Catherine Ross's article on Reading for Pleasure was very interesting for me because I consider myself a 'heavy reader' as were the people she interviewed. The goal of her study (which included information from about 200 avid readers) was to figure out how people go about choosing books to read for pleasure. After all, this is an information seeking event - just not the traditional kind we here about in the academic world. Her results showed that most people choose books because they have been recommended by friends and family or they are from a beloved known author. Other reasons are a result of browsing: the title was interesting, they liked the cover, or the blurb on the back/inside jacket made them interested. Very rarely did they say they heard about it online (although some people did report this as a reason for buying a book). Personally, I find books in a variety of ways: hearing about it from friends and family, picking an author that I know I like, browsing the aisles of the book store, or asking a few of the staff members at the Bull's Head that have given me great advice in the past. The online way I would seek information online would still fall under the category of recommendations from family and friends; for instance, I know that I trust Alex's taste in books so if she were to post information on her favorite books to her blog then I would most likely purchase some of the books she recommends. The article just goes to show that there is an entire world of information seeking that we don't traditionally read about as LIS students. Even though this group of information seekers is not using an information system necessarily, we can still gain knowledge about the information seeking habits of users who seek information for recreational purposes.

Scrapbook - Unit 4

Wilson discusses many models for having information needs in his paper, but the most interesting to me was the stress and coping model from psychology. He goes on to quote Miller and Mangan (1983) who report that stress is related to how much information an individual has - someone with a good deal of information about a stress-inducing activity will be less stressed than someone with a lack of information. It may not happen every time, but in most cases you can see the connection between stress and information needs. For instance, I have to write a book chapter on virtual management (a true story) that's due in a few weeks and I need information on the topic. I am VERY stressed out about my information need. My coping mechanism for now is knowing that I have professors I can go to and ask for help finding sources. Stress and coping was a theme I explored in my undergraduate honors thesis on the gender gap in technology. The connection here is that even if you think you don't know something (when you do) you are stressed out because of your alleged information need. The female IS/CS students I interviewed felt inferior to the males they had programming courses with because they thought that they weren't as good at coding and math as their male peers were. In reality, their grades were equal, sometimes superior to the males. They thought they had an information need to learn how to code and were thus very stressed out about it. This is an interesting way to look at information needs and it gives the topic a refreshingly new perspective. I think Wilson has the right idea - information science is about every discipline. It seems that looking to our foundational disciplines (so to speak) - psychology, computer science, communication, and library science - we can look at information needs from a different angle. This can only help us, as information professionals, better serve our users.

Solomon notes two studies that discuss the autopoietic characteristics of information systems. Dr. Barreau's 'make do' article discusses how people take the technologies that mostly fit their situation and work around them (sometimes providing the user with more work than they originally had) in order to 'make do' with the technology. Bailey's work talks about hospitals dealing with technology and patient records to deal with secondary information needs. Both of these examples show that technology is not a one-size fits all solution. Consulting firms typically take a technological solution that worked well at one company and implement at another company of similar stature. Most of the time this does not seem to be a good solution and causing what Dr. Barreau calls 'making do'. All in all, I think the important thing to remember with this article and all of our foundations article is that information contexts are people specific. That is to say, everyone brings his or her own information seeking biases with them when they search. They each have unique experiences that have an effect on their information searching processes. As we design information systems we have to remember that the same solution (even the same work around) does not work for each individual. If I'm designing a search engine for the ACM digital library, for example, I know that I can develop a lot of features like thesauri and advanced searching capabilities because my target audience is information professionals. However, designing a mainstream search engine (like Google) is completely different and much more difficult because you don't know your audience. They're successful because they keep things simple. My point is, know your audience as much as possible and understand that they all have different information needs and even though you can't please everyone, hopefully you can design a search engine that helps people bridge the gaps between information needs and knowledge (as outlined in Dervin's sense-making theory).

From all of our foundational readings I have learned that designing systems to solving information seeking behavior is not a one size fits all solution. In all of the readings it has been reiterated that everyone brings their own personal beliefs, values, and experiences to the table. All of these factors affect information seeking behavior. I particularly like Chatman's rounding theory and bringing in the idea that we all create our own small worlds where certain information is important to us and particular information sources have more merit than others. Whenever I think about designing a solution for the general public's information seeking needs, I think of Google. Google has a simple interface and admittedly does not produce the best results, but they produce results that satisfy their user population. An academic search engine like LexisNexis on the other hand, has a very specific group they are targeting and thus can use more advanced search features for their experienced users. Personally, I think Google has the hardest job of solving a wide variety of information seeking problems for their users: people go to Google to find answers to academic, work, and recreational problems and Google must find a way to bridge this gap for a huge range of people - their audience includes a wide variety of people with different types of information needs. From all of these readings I can take away the fact that while you can't solve everyone's problem you can know your target audience and work towards helping them bridge the gap between a lack of information and a state of knowledge.

Scrapbook Week 3.2

I made some comments on blackboard about the readings and how they all fit together that I think should appear here in my scrapbook:

It seems that the common agreement in all of our readings for this week is that in the past information systems have been designed in a very scientific way. This method has resulted in designing systems with the information in mind - that is to say that the systems are being designed around the needs of the data (i.e., how things should be organized, what categories it fits into, etc.). All of the authors from this week through their various theories have discussed the need to design systems with the information needs of the user in mind. These needs are affected by many aspects of the individual person and what they bring to their information seeking process. Information mosaics and rounding takes into account the many other factors in a person's life (information from people, their experiences, etc.).

Kuhlthau's theory discusses a holistic theory of information seeking, taking into account the actions, feelings, and thoughts of the user. Kuhlthau argues that the information process is a confusing, not orderly, process as others have argued. Marchionini, for instance says that each step taken by a user leads to the next one and that every user is different because of the steps they choose to take in information seeking. He does agree with the others that the choices the user makes are affected by other aspects of their life and what they value as 'good' information.

Brenda Dervin's sense-making theory seems to take both Kuhlthau and Marchionini's ideas into account with her sense-making theory. This theory says that we are all in a chaotic state of information seeking and we seek information to reach an orderly state of being. Her theory sees information as a way to bridge the gap between these two points.

The point from all of the authors, I think, is that every person brings their own histories and ways of information seeking to the table and that we should design our information systems with these thoughts in mind.

Scrapbook - Unit 3

Chatman's idea of 'life in the round' is that we each live in our own small world - we are defined by the rules of this world we have created for ourselves. I think what she is saying goes along with the idea that we use trusted information sources such as friends and family before we may use a search engine or the library. I especially like her comment that information in this context has 'very little' to do with data and that it has to be "a part of a system of related ideas, expectations, standards, and values" (p. 208) … she goes on to say that sharing "common ideas about an experience allows meaning to occur" (p. 208). I think Dr. Chatman is saying that giving meaning to data makes it information and that everyone has their own way of giving meaning to something. I think we can support people's "rounding" by remembering that our way of information seeking isn't "one size fits all". How people find information and trust that information differs from person to person based on their beliefs, experiences, and their own "round".

Kuhlthau brings up an excellent point - when people are searching for information, they don't know what they are searching for. Also, they're not just searching for information, rather they are searching for meaning. I like the idea of the holistic theory of information seeking because people (users) are more than just a process. Last week we read about how each individual brings their own thoughts and experiences into their searches; and Chatman talks about everyone being in their own 'small world'; Kuhlthau puts these ideas together with the holistic theory of information seeking. By taking into account thoughts, feelings, and actions into one process we can design better information systems.

I think one huge disagreement between Marchionini and Kuhlthau is that he (Marchionini) defines the information seeking processes as quantitative and Kuhlthau reports that quantifying the processes is too scientific for users. Marchionini says that the information seeking processes is related to sub-processes, each effected by the one before it (here I think Kuhlthau would agree). He does state that the problem definition stage lasts throughout the information seeking processes until the user has completed their searching.

I think Marchionini's theory of one processes effecting the next one would translate into the non-electronic world; if I'm browsing the shelves at Davis and find a book that looks to be what I'm searching for, I would check to see who is in the reference portion of the book and go find their titles. The first book I pick up would determine my next set of sources. However, I think only in electronic systems do we have an issue of "knowing the language". Expert systems are obviously the best to use but if you don't know the language, you can't very well search it. However, in most non-electronic environments there is a person there if you can't understand the LOC subject headings.

Dervin argues that technologies have not changed how we get information or how we search for information before we had the technologies. Rather, technology has allowed us to do what people once did faster and with a much greater amount of information. This means that we haven't made any huge technological discoveries or changed how we seek information. This is an interesting standpoint and, now that I think about, seems to be true. Even though the method we use to search for data (electronically versus by a human) has changed, the principles behind this idea has not. I'm not sure what the next way to solve information queries will be, but Dervin's sense-making theory is quite different from the others we have read about. Her theory attempts to bridge the gaps between order and chaos that exist both in our lives and in our information needs; furthermore, it implies that the information seeker is constantly solving information needs and that they are theorists in understanding their own worlds.

While her theory seems strange to me, I do like the way Dervin attempts to look at every angle of the problem: what brought the user to the problem, what kind of answer they want, etc. Also, the idea of bridging connections between readers makes things more personal and I think it would help the user feel like they have been truly helped - i.e., they haven't just found the information they were looking for, they have found an information resource.

Dr. Solomon brings up the idea of information mosaics as they were discovered using colored sticky-notes. This made me think of my 'to do' list system. I have 3 colored notebooks - green is for work, blue is for school, and pink is for home. On top of this I have a monthly calendar which details appointments and meetings for all three places. Until this semester, I had all 3 combined in one book, making things very confusing. I had important work information and my grocery list in the same place; this system had me constantly flipping pages to find what I was looking for. (Yes, lots of people have suggested I get a PDA but I prefer my lists for now.) My new system is ideal - I know where everything that I need is located. These 3 books are my personal information mosaics and they are (for the time being) my essence - flipping through them you would get to know a lot about me. Also, if you combine them you could see the roundness of my information needs.

The theories life in the round and information mosaics stood out the most to me in this last set of readings. As in my above example, we all have different aspects of our lives that require very different types of information. Putting all these aspects together, I can see how both authors developed their theories. I also like the idea in this unit of making information seeking more personal - every author seems to be writing in this context. They are not just speaking of an end-user trying to find the answer to a single question, but rather, they talk about how a person has different parts of their lives that need different kinds of information. Instead of designing systems around the information, these theories bring up the idea of designing them around the user. Finally, I like that Solomon talks about learning as we design information systems. We, as information professionals, must learn about our users in order to design more effective systems.

Scrapbook - Unit 2

Introspection: 8.29.30

For another class (International Perspectives on Information Management) my ideas on what constitutes information came into play. We were discussing khipu, the Incas cryptic knots that represent numbers. Someone in the class felt that these numbers were not information and I disagree. I believe that the khipu themselves are information - information about the Incas. And I believe that the numbers they represent are information because it tells us about the monetary holdings of the Incas. In context, anything can be information (even cryptic knots!); however if I were to write this:

8473938

Then I believe that would be data. I think that data is information without context. This was very frustrating because it made me question what I categorize as information. Even now I still stand by my earlier assumptions!

I've also been thinking about my email and my 'to do' lists. I have 'to do' lists all over the place - a list for school, work, and home every day. With my email, I archive all sorts of information. Obviously, both of these things are information to me. However, what if someone came behind me and looked at my email or my lists? Most likely my lists would just be data to them because it has no meaning and I write in my own shorthand. So most people wouldn't be able to decipher my lists. But the email is a different story - it's clearly labeled and organized with lots of detail; this may appear to be information.

Retrospection: 8.31.06

I recently had an information-seeking problem. My fiancée's Motorola Razr cell phone has broken and we can't seem to fix it. Naturally, the cell phone company says it will take 'weeks' to get it fixed. So I decided that maybe we could fix it ourselves - or at least figure out what, exactly, caused the screen to become very pixilated. So, I've Googled the problem as well as checked Motorola's 'help' pages. While I've found all sorts of horror stories on the phone breaking, and even some breaking exactly like ours, no one details how they've fixed it. I need more information! Motorola's pages have been particularly unhelpful - if their documentation was better organized I feel that I could find the answer I am looking for!

Reading Comments: 8.31.06

These readings have made me think about what I consider to be 'information'. I particularly agree with Meltzer (as quoted by Faibisoff and Ely on p. 4): "For communication, an exchange of meaning must occur - there must be an understanding of the data." I believe that this is a good definition of information - it is data that must be understood.

Also, (on page 4) the authors discuss designing systems around the user, not the information. Specifically, they say: "These information needs of citizens must take priority over the design and implementation of elaborate, highly sophisticated information delivery systems created to exploit technology." The authors go on to discuss making technology 'simple' so that it's easier to use. This made me think of Google's interface design. I wonder if part of the reason it's so successful (other than the fact that the search engine is well made) is that it has a simple design?

Dervin and Nilan discuss the paradigm shift before and after 1978. It seems that prior to that time people were designing information systems (including library catalogs) around the information. Interestingly enough, in Faibisoff and Ely's paper they call for a change in this paradigm. After their paper, Dervin and Nilan report that systems started being designed around user needs, not information needs.

In discussing the literature around information systems, Dervin and Nilan bring up the notion of obtaining demographic information on users in order to better design information systems around their needs. It seems that in recent years web systems have started doing this. Look at Netflix - they judge which movies I like based on previous movie choices. And Amazon does the exact thing with purchases made. Sometimes they recommend things that I actually want, other times they are way off.

All of this sharing of demographic information brings up a question of privacy. Do I want Netflix and Amazon to know what I like? What if information systems started combining they data they collect on us? What would happen if Time Warner knows not only what sort of services I use, who I call, what movies I watch, etc. and they combine with Google and find out exactly what I'm searching on? Could they provide me with better services or would they just know too much information about me?

As for Johnson's article on ignorance, it is an interesting point of view on information seeking - one that I have not encountered in my years at SILS. Some of the points made me think of the digital divide - Johnson says that we are increasing the amount of information that certain people can get at. What about people without computers/Internet? Putting more information out there is only increasing the amount of knowledge that Internet users have. Perhaps we should spend more time increasing the availability of the Internet for the group of people on the other side of the digital divide. Libraries help by having public access terminals but do these people come to the library? As information professionals we should get information out to EVERYONE - not just to those whom information is easy to give.

Also, Johnson mentions the information 'we don't know that we don't know' - how do we even begin to design systems for users searching for the unknown incorrectly (i.e., when they think they know what they want, but in reality they do not). Is it our responsibility to take these information needs into consideration when building our systems?

Finally, if ignorance is a good thing as Johnson suggests it sometimes is, what does that mean for the information professional? We are constantly bombarded with information overload - there is so much information available that people don't know what to do with it. Could they make better decisions with less information?

Harris and Dewdney's article came at the issue of information seeking from a very interesting perspective. They presented the idea of seeking help instead of seeking information. In reality, that's what goes on when people are searching. The authors also discussed the fact that many people consider friends and family to be good sources of information, even more so than what we as academics would call reliable information. As far as designing effective searching systems go, we need to remember not to discredit these sources.

Welcome to my INLS 715 scrapbooking blog! Here I will discuss topics related to effectively getting information to users (otherwise known as people)! Enjoy!