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Special Topic Issue
Part II: Information Seeking Research
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Editorial
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767
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Introduction
Amanda Spink and Charles Cole
Published online 26 February 2004
This is the second part of a two-part special topic JASIST issue on information seeking. The first part presented papers on the topics of
health information seeking and everyday life information seeking or ELIS (i.e., information seeking outside of work or school). This second issue presents papers on the topics of information retrieval and
information seeking in industry environments.
Information Behavior is a broad term covering all aspects of information seeking, including passive or undetermined information behavior.
Information-Seeking Behavior is usually thought of as active or conscious information behavior. Information-Searching Behavior describes the interactive elements between a user and an information system.
Information-Use Behavior is about the user's acquisition and incorporation of data in some kind of information process. This leads to the production of information, but also back to the broad range of Information
Behavior in the first part of the continuum.
The three information retrieval reports veer from the traditional information-searching approach of user-system interaction, while the three
industry environment articles veer from the traditional information-seeking approach of specific context information-seeking studies.
Information Searching in Information Retrieval
Report 1, Report 2, Report 3
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Research
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769
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Modeling Cognitive Processes in information Seeking: From Popper to Pask
Nigel Ford
Published online 23 February 2004
Nigel Ford's article Modeling Cognitive Processes in Information Seeking: From Popper to Pask models the cognitive processes involved in user-IR interaction. Building on previous information seeking models (Wilson, Ellis, Cole), but above all
Pask's Conversation Theory, Ford models the user-IR system interaction in terms of message sending and receiving, suggesting an IR system model for facilitating the decoding and encoding of these messages. The
report places a strong theoretical emphasis on information use from a cognitive perspective, but the researcher does this inside the information-seeking framework of problem resolution.
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783
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Searching the Peer-to-Peer Networks: The Community and Their Queries
Sai Ho Kwok and Christopher C. Yang
Published online 9 April 2004
Kwok and Yang's study Searching the Peer-to-Peer Networks: The Community and Their Queries investigates peer-to-peer (P2P) network queries and compares these queries to findings from previous WWW research. Query logs were collected over a 7-day period from Web users using the Gnutella protocol. Key findings are that the peers are mostly located in the United States and queries are mostly repeat queries; thus, there are more repeat queries than in WWW studies. Also, query length was found to be longer than the query length reported in previous WWW studies. The difference in information behavior between P2P and WWW users may be due to the differences in information use.
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794
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Using the Information Seeker to Elicit Construct Models for Search Engine Evaluation
Sarah E. Crudge and Frances C. Johnson
Published online 11 March 2004
Crudge and Johnson's article Using the Information Seeker to Elicit Construct Models for Search Engine Evaluation assesses the suitability of using repertory grid technique as a multi-dimensional evaluation instrument of Web search
engines. Repertory grid technique is a structured technique for eliciting both the conceptual content embodied in an individual's mental model and the relationships which exist among these concepts. Bipolar
statements - good-bad - were elicited from 10 first-year undergraduates in the Department of Information and Communications at Manchester Metropolitan University. It was determined that the
repertory grid effectively derived categories of user-determined evaluative constructs, thus providing a user-centered evaluative instrument.
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807
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Seeking Information in Order to Produce Information: An Empirical Study at Hewlett Packard Labs
Sandra Hirsh and Jamie Dinkelacker
Published online 23 February 2004
Hirsh and Dinkelacker's report Seeking Information in Order to Produce Information: An Empirical Study at Hewlett Packard Labs examines computer industry researchers' information seeking and information production at Hewlett Packard (HP) and Compaq
Computer just after their merger. A sample-frame methodology was developed for the total population of researchers at six representative labs from HP and Compaq. A questionnaire survey garnered 60 responses or a
33.3% response rate. The study found that information was largely used to produce intellectual property like patents and software code, which is produced collaboratively in teams.
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818
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Internet Searching and Browsing in a Multilingual World: An Experiment on the Chinese Business Intelligence Portal (CbizPort)
Wingyan Chung, Yiwen Zhang, Zan Huang, Gang Wang, Thian-Huat Ong, and Hsinchen Chen
Published online 20 February 2004
Chung, Zhang, Huang, Wang, Ong, and Chen's report Internet Searching and Browsing in a Multilingual World: An Experiment on the
Chinese Business Intelligence Portal (CBizPort) evaluates the researchers' own CBizPort Web search engine
against existing Chinese language Web search engines. Thirty subjects were used in the experiment; the dependent variables were accuracy, precision, and recall. The study found no difference between CBizPort and
existing Chinese language search engines. However, the combination of using CBizPort and existing Chinese language Web search engines performed better than existing Chinese language Web search engines alone.
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832
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Accessibility and Use of Information Sources Among Computer Scientists and Software Engineers in Israel: Academy Versus Industry
Moshe Yitzhaki and Gloria Hammershlag
Published online 2 March 2004
Yitzhaki and Hammershlag's article Accessibility and Use of Information Sources Among Computer Scientists and Software Engineers in
Israel: Academy vs. Industry compares the information-seeking behavior of computer scientists and
engineers at an initial information-seeking stage of their work projects and at a mid-project information-seeking stage. Seven hundred questionnaires were sent to all computer science faculty in Israel, and to
selected Israel technology company section heads for in-company distribution; 233 computer scientists and engineers responded to the questionnaire. The researchers found that the academics (computer scientists)
rated print professional journals significantly higher at the initial and mid-project stages of their work projects, as well as for accessibility, than did the engineers. Engineers rated Internet textbooks more
highly for initial use, mid-project use, and accessibility than did computer scientists.
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Letters to the Editor
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843
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Author Cocitation Analysis and Pearson's r
Per Ahlgren, Bo Jarneving, and Ronald Rousseau
Published online 4 March 2004
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843
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Replies and a Correction
Howard D. White
Published online 11 March 2004
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Journal of the American Society for
Information Science and Technology
