LIS 502 Principles

1
LIS 502Principles Users

• Lisa M. Given
• Associate Professor, SLIS
• Director, International Institute for Qualitative
  Methodology

2
User (or Information) Needs

• This term embraces all experiences of an
  individual associated with the search for
  information - including those which are
• internal
• external
• unrelated to libraries
• aborted
• See Lynn Westbrook. 1997. User Needs. In
  Encyclopedia of LIS, v. 59, supp. 22 316-347.

3
A Current Perspective

• Information can be any difference you perceive,
  in your environment or within yourself. It is any
  aspect that you notice in the pattern of reality.
• An information need is a recognition that your
  knowledge is inadequate to satisfy a your
  goal(s).
• Information seeking is a conscious effort to
  acquire information in response to a need.
• Information behavior encompasses information
  seeking as well as other unintentional or passive
  behaviors, as well as purposive behaviors that do
  not involve seeking, such as avoiding
  information.
• Case, Donald O. 2007. Looking for information A
  survey of research on information seeking, needs,
  and behavior. 2nd ed. London Elsevier (p. 5).

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Information Information Behaviours

• Information is inherently subjective
• What is information/informative? - from the
  users perspective
• Information behaviours can be shaped by
  affective (emotional) elements
• See Harris Dewdney (accessible, interpersonal,
  emotional support, habitual patterns)
• See Nahl Bilal (2007) Information and Emotion
• In Context of situation, of personal needs or
  wants, of environment, etc

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Cases 8 Lessons of IB Research

• Formal sources rationalized searches reflect
  only one side of human information behavior
• More information is not always better
• Context (personal situational) is central to
  the transfer of information
• Sometimes information (esp. generalized packages
  of information) doesnt help
• Sometimes it is not possible to make information
  available or accessible
• Information seeking is a dynamic process
• Information seeking isnt always about a
  problem or a problematic situation often,
  its simply a creative act
• Information behavior isnt always about making
  sense of the world
• Case, Donald O. 2007. Looking for information A
  survey of research on information seeking, needs,
  and behavior. 2nd ed. London Elsevier (p.
  326-328.

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Question...

• Thinking of a recent assignment what was your
  information behaviour process?
• How did you find information? (Or did you find
  it? if not, why not?)
• What role did passive/unintentional finding
  play in your process?
• What about affect/emotion?

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Organizing Knowledge The Systems Focus

• Presumes order and certainty (while users needs
  are often characterized by uncertainty and
  confusion)
• System design not focused on users information
  behaviours
• Users retrieval strategies must take system
  design into account

8
IB Research Systems Focus

• How satisfied/successful are students searches
  in the university catalogue?
• How do physicians use medical databases in
  diagnosing patients?
• Why do people ignore safety warnings on packages
  and advertisements?
• How should the library market its services to
  users?
• How does a family use the public library? What
  materials do they borrow? Read?

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Relevance

• Core concept for evaluating effectiveness of
  information retrieval system design
• Focus on quantitative/experimental design
• Problem what is relevant?
• 3 views of relevance
• the system view (query terms indexing terms)
• the information view (role of intermediary)
• the situation view (only users can judge
  relevance)

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Relevance Research

• Classic experiments
• small test collection
• search questions are generated
• relevance judgements obtained for each
  question/document pair based on formulae for
  precision and recall
• relevance focus on content (topic) of the
  document
• These are still used, but often criticized by
  user-focused IB researchers

11
Relevance Research Critique

• Says that traditional research
• Ignores the context of the information request
• Is based on the assumption that the subject of
  a document is the users primary concern
• Disregards the changing nature of the information
  request
• Fails to focus on the complexity of an
  individuals background task situation
• Shift in focus to account for subjectivity
• To situational relevance often labeled
  pertinence or even psychological relevance

12
IB Research User Focus

• How do students make sense of their academic
  activities and what role does the library play
  in that process?
• How does a manager learn about job-related
  information outside of formal communication
  channels?
• How do the elderly learn about and cope with
  health-related issues in their daily lives?
• Why do people browse in bookshops when they have
  no intention to buy books?

13
A Shift in Focus

• Taemin Kim Park (1994) - interviewed faculty and
  graduate students about information they were
  seeking and what they found to be relevant
• Qualitative studies in this area quite new at
  the time (now, very common)
• Found that relevance judgments fell into 4
  categories which were interconnected and
  influenced one another

14
Parks Relevance Categories

• Interpretation of a Citation
• title, style of title, author name, journal name,
  document type, abstract (and interconnections
  between these)
• Internal (experience) Context
• users previous experience/perceptions, users
  level of expertise in the problem area, users
  previous research experience, users education or
  training

15
Parks Relevance Categories

• External (search) Context
• perception of search quality and availability of
  information, goal of the search, priority of info
  needs, research stage, end product
• Problem (content) Context
• same/similar problem - for definitions, as
  background, for the methodology, etc.
• different problem - for methodology, as analogy,
  as background, etc.

16
Question...

• Thinking about an index (e.g., in a database like
  Library Information Science Abstracts) how
  might we organize information to account for
  users information behaviours and their judgments
  of relevance?

17
Indexes Retrieval

• Indexes provide access to bibliographic
  entities are used as retrieval tools
• They provide access to smaller works (e.g.
  journal articles) that are held in information
  packages that consist of collections of small
  works (e.g. a journal)
• Many index publishers use a thesaurus for the
  assignment of subject terms
• What is a subject?

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Points of Divergence

• For every subject users pieces of literature
  may hold different perspectives on that subject
• Different labels
• e.g., bibliographic instruction, library
  instruction, user education
• Different concepts of scope
• e.g., personal instruction, group instruction
• Associations with other subjects
• e.g., education

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Indexing Languages

• Indexing language (retrieval language)
• a list of terms that may be used as access points
  in an index
• 3 Types
• Controlled indexing languages (thesauri)
• Natural indexing languages (text itself)
• Free indexing languages (no constraints beyond
  applicability for the subject field)

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Subject Access

• To show what the collection has on a particular
  topic
• To show what the collection has on related topics
• How?
• Broader Terms (BT) - e.g. Lettuce
• Narrower Terms (NT) - e.g. Romaine Lettuce
• Related Terms (RT) - e.g. Spinach

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Subject Indexing

• Key indexers skill and judgement
• Steps
• Familiarization
• Analysis (specificity/exhaustivity)
• What is the document about?
• Why has it been added to our collection?
• What aspects will interest our users?
• Translation

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Question...

• How can we bridge the user-principles divide or
  continuum in systems design?
• Are there non-subject elements that indexes could
  provide? How would these help users to find
  information?
• How can we address affective elements of IB?
• How can we facilitate passive/unintentional
  information location?