The Search and Retrieval Expectations of Information Professionals and Desktop Searchers a corporate

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The Search and Retrieval Expectations of
Information Professionals and Desktop Searchers
a corporate perspective

• Barbara J. Peterson
• February 27, 2005

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The Context - Industrial, Fortune 500, Global

• Differences
• Long tradition of valuing information vs. major
  swings in support
• Very strong library and information services
  organization staffed with professional
  information scientists vs. embryonic organization
  staffed with subject matter experts

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The Context - Industrial, Fortune 500, Global

• Differences (cont.)
• Knowledge management a way of life for 50 years
  vs. a "tribal approach to knowledge
• Applied research and development vs. development
• Many RD staff are scientists with PhDs vs. very
  few

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Corporate Perspective

• Based on experience at 3M and Ecolab
• Ad hoc observations and interviews
• Analysis of usage data
• Structured study of end-users use of a specific
  tool as part of a Six Sigma project
• Structured observations of user behavior
• Follow-on survey
• Intranet usability study

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Expectations for Search

• The WWW and Google, in particular, has changed
  the paradigm everyone expects speed and ease of
  use
• End Users
• Most turn first to the Web and/or to other
  desktop resources provided by their company

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Expectations for Search

• End Users (cont.)
• Many corporate library and information services
  encourage their users to do some initial
  searching and spend significant financial and
  human resources supporting this approach
• Demand for mediated searches remains strong in
  some corporate organizations

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Expectations for Search

• End Users (cont.)
• Limited time for just-in-case training
• Intuitive interfaces are highly valued
• Modular just-in-time, context sensitive education
  in more likely to be used
• Six Sigma study revealed the value of formal
  training
• One-stop searching preferred
• Some end users are sophisticated information
  consumers

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Expectations for Search

• Information Professionals
• Objective right information at the right time,
  in the right format, and at the right cost
• Time is divided between selecting and acquiring
  end user resources (both fee-based and free),
  supporting those resources, and completing
  in-depth, business critical searches

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Expectations for Search

• Information Professionals (cont.)
• Begin most searches today, for costs reasons,
  with the Web
• At Ecolab, Google and Copernic current search
  engines of choice
• Continue to use the interfaces that enable them
  to optimize the in-depth indexing and unique
  features of specialized databases
• Preference for interfaces that include formatting
  and analysis features

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Expectations for Retrieval

• End Users
• Business need and time drive expectations
• The competitive landscape and the criticality of
  intellectual property drive the value of high
  recall
• Limited time increases the value of relevance and
  of informative abstracts and titles (patents)
• With information literacy education, quickly
  appreciate controlled vocabularies, etc.

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Expectations for Retrieval

• Information Professionals
• Sources that can be trusted
• Current, particularly important for alerting
• Provide the stated coverage
• Indexed by subject matter experts
• Problems quickly communicated
• Value
• Usage and cost information
• Suppliers who are partners
• Global coverage

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Expectations for Delivery

• End Users
• Nirvana immediate access to the document that
  has the answer or the information that is needed
• For alerting services, tailored push is more
  effective than pull
• Information Professionals
• Goal is to give clients readily usable
  information
• Organized with table of contents including links
• Includes links to full-text
• Assists in analyzing content

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Expectations for Delivery

• Information Professionals (cont.)
• Corporate information organizations are beginning
  to deploy link resolving technology as their
  primary sources become Open URL compliant
• Open Access is being most effectively leveraged
  by the largest corporate organization
• RSS is likely to have the greatest impact going
  forward

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Expectations for Analysis

• End User
• Tools for extracting knowledge and insight
  quickly, particularly from large information
  collections
• Tools for summarizing and presenting conclusions
  to management visually
• Easy to use

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Expectations for Analysis

• Information Professional
• Easy to use to import data, to carry out
  analysis, and to distribute results
• Flexible multiple input sources
• Reasonable terms and conditions from information
  suppliers that take into account this new use of
  their data

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In Summary

• Guiding Principles for Information Acquisition
• User-friendly interface
• Direct links to full-text information
• Easy to maintain
• Consistent, reliable statistics on usage
• Reasonably priced
• Globally accessible