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!