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5856 results in Facet Publishing

Page 218 of 293

  • 4 - Approaches to investigating information interaction and behaviour

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 61-76

  • Summary

    Information interaction and behaviour was first recognized as an area for research in the early 1960s, and a few studies had been conducted as early as the 1930s (e.g. Akers, 1931). It has expanded greatly with the introduction of computer-based information systems – and particularly with the arrival of the web. The definition of the field is still evolving and its title has gradually changed. Nevertheless, its goal has always been to investigate the behaviour of people when they interact with information (see Chapter 2, ‘Information Behaviour and Seeking’, for a description of the main components of research in human information-seeking behaviour).

    This chapter analyses the approaches that human information behaviour researchers use when they investigate information-seeking behaviour – how people look for information when they use electronic information systems. The development of these approaches followed those in other social sciences, if with some delay. While human information behaviour studies in the first two decades were guided by the same approach (materialized predominantly through large-scale questionnaires), later various approaches were used. These are not isolated from one another, but connected through several dimensions that point to their commonalities and differences.

    In this chapter I explain some of these dimensions and discuss the contributions of human information behaviour studies to research and design. The dimensions I consider are philosophical stance, research setting, level of control, instruments for data collection, level of generalization, nature of data and analysis, and method of reasoning.

    The philosophical stance

    All researchers have a philosophical stance that guides their work, whether or from one project to another. A researcher's stance shapes the decisions about what research questions to investigate and these questions guide the study design, including the approach to be applied. Human information behaviour research has been directed by several stances and discussing all of them requires a book of its own. Here I adapt a simplistic dichotomy – that between the positivist and the non-positivist stances. The positivist stance was the first to influence human information behaviour and information retrieval research. Information retrieval evaluation investigations have been guided only by positivism – which has often been named ‘the scientific method’ – and is still the dominant stance in human information behaviour research.

Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011
  • Information retrieval (IR) is a complex human activity supported by sophisticated systems. Information science has contributed much to the design and evaluation of previous generations of IR system development and to our general understanding of how such systems should be designed and yet, due to the increasing success and diversity of IR systems, many recent textbooks concentrate on IR systems themselves and ignore the human side of searching for information. This book is the first text to provide an information science perspective on IR. Unique in its scope, the book covers the whole spectrum of information retrieval, including: history and background information; behaviour and seeking task-based information; searching and retrieval approaches to investigating information; interaction and behaviour information; representation access models; evaluation interfaces for IR; interactive techniques; web retrieval, ranking and personalization; and, recommendation, collaboration and social search multimedia: interfaces and access. A key text for senior undergraduates and masters' level students of all information and library studies courses, this book is also useful for practising LIS professionals who need to better appreciate how IR systems are designed, implemented and evaluated.

  • Foreword

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp xxv-xxxii

  • Summary

    The job of the search user interface is to aid users in the expression of their information needs, in the formulation of their queries, in the understanding of their search results, and in keeping track of the progress of their information seeking efforts.

    (Marti Hearst, Search User Interfaces, Cambridge University Press, 2009)

    Search user interfaces are at the centre of interactive information seeking and retrieval. Yes, search user interfaces include the jobs that the quotation above enumerates and even more. While this book is not only about interfaces, it is also about those jobs and even more about that more.

    This book reports on the recent advances on interaction topics reflected in its title. However, the historic roots of these topics go deep – and like all roots they are entangled and not that visible. But we can learn from them in terms of problems addressed and solutions attempted. Research on information-seeking behaviour, under various names and orientations, goes back many decades. So let us start with a bit of general history of the topics covered by the book; more specific history is presented in Chapter 1.

    Activities associated with what we now call information retrieval existed and were practised long before Calvin Mooers (1919–1994, physicist and information retrieval pioneer) coined the term information retrieval in 1951. They were rooted in libraries but left them to become part of technology.

    Mooers (1951) defined information retrieval as follows:

    Information retrieval is … the finding or discovery process with respect to stored information … useful to [a user]. Information retrieval embraces the intellectual aspects of the description of information and its specification for search, and also whatever systems, techniques, or machines that are employed to carry out the operation.

    Not surprisingly, interaction is not mentioned in this definition – at the time the concept and term (in its present denotation and connotation) did not exist, even though interaction was practised from the start using ‘whatever systems, techniques, or machines’ were available. Even ‘intellectual aspects … for search’ imply interaction. As it turned out, the ‘systems, techniques or machines’ on the one hand and ‘intellectual aspects’ on the other became two major branches of problem orientation and inspiration for information retrieval research and practice.

  • 9 - Interactive techniques

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 171-188

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Information seeking is a core human life activity, driven by information needs, which are situation-driven phenomena emerging from people's desire to tackle a problem (Belkin, Oddy and Brooks, 1982a, 1982b) or address an incompleteness (Mackay, 1960; Belkin, 1980; Dervin, 1983). Search systems provide a means for people to find the information they seek rapidly. Interaction between searchers and these systems is important for effective information retrieval, whose interaction is primarily manifested in mainstream search systems, such as web search engines, through multi-turn queries comprising dialogue (input by the user) and search results (output by the system). Query formulation can be an intellectually demanding process that has a direct impact on the relevancy of search results (Croft and Thompson, 1987). When searchers are unfamiliar with the collection makeup and retrieval environment or information needs are vague or complex, query formulation challenges are magnified (Furnas et al., 1987; Salton and Buckley, 1990; Spink, Greisdorf and Bateman, 1998). To help users, search systems can provide support beyond processing rudimentary queries and providing search results. Systems can help their users determine the relevant items, create effective search queries, and make search decisions such as determining how best to use the query. Among other benefits, these techniques can help searchers better specify well defined information needs or further develop their previously ill-defined needs. In this chapter we describe techniques that have emerged from the information retrieval research community in recent decades to support search interaction. We begin with a brief description of how interaction is traditionally modeled in information-seeking research.

    Modeling information seeking

    Information retrieval traditionally conforms to a query-centric model of information seeking known as specified searching, where the query conceived by a searcher and presented to the system is assumed to specify the information that the searcher is trying to locate (Oddy, 1977). This model assumes that the information being sought exists in the document collection being searched and that the goal of the search process is to retrieve that information. Although this paradigm permits query refinement, information-seeking behavior is constrained to analytical search strategies that yield precise results with minimal need for result set examination and item comparison (Marchionini, 2006b). Such information-seeking scenarios would benefit from support for lookup searches and other specialized search support.

  • 2 - Information behavior and seeking

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 15-42

  • Summary

    Introduction

    ‘Information behavior’ is currently a preferred term to describe the many ways in which humans interact with information, in particular, the ways in which people seek and utilize information.

    Marcia J. Bates (2010, 2381)

    A substantial body of literature exists on empirical studies and theoretical discussions of information behavior. Taking a literary-warrant approach, we note that research in human information behavior has investigated a broad range of topics: information needs, information seeking, looking for information, searching information retrieval systems, browsing information resources, finding inform ation, relevance judgment, information use, information generation, infor - mation communication, information sharing, information transfer, personal information management, accidental information encountering, serendipitous information, information avoidance, affect associated with information, information habit, information style, and any information-related human behavior.

    As a preferred term, ‘information behavior’ has its evolutionary path. In the early 19th century, studies about information use focused on usage of information resources and channels or systems (e.g. journals, interpersonal communications and libraries). After World War 2, the rapid development in science and technology led to the advent of online information retrieval systems, which marked a new era of information storage, dissemination and retrieval. User studies in the late 1960s and 1970s expanded from investigating information use to observing information need, for example by scientists and engineers in their work environments. It was also during this period that much debate was devoted to the concept of relevance as it was a key element for two traditional measures of information retrieval performance: recall (the percentage of the relevant documents being retrieved) and precision (the percentage of the retrieved documents that are relevant). In the late 1970s and 1980s, the information world witnessed the transition from card catalogs and print indexes and abstracts to online public access catalogs (OPACs) and various commercial online information retrieval services.

    The term ‘information seeking’ occurred in the literature as a short form for information need, seeking and use. The first International Conference on Information Seeking in Context (ISIC), held in Finland in 1996, was significant as the meaning of context was debated; a substantial number of papers reported on research of real users taking qualitative, naturalistic or multiple approaches; and research findings included not only purposive, active information-seeking behavior such as work-task-related behavior, but also unintentional, passive information behavior such as accidental information encountering and information avoidance.

  • 11 - Recommendation, collaboration and social search

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 205-220

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This chapter considers the social component of interactive information retrieval: what is the role of other people in searching and browsing? For simplicity we begin by considering situations without computers. After all, you can interactively retrieve information without a computer; you just have to interact with someone or something else. Such an analysis can then help us think about the new forms of collaborative interactions that extend our conceptions of information search, made possible by the growth of networked ubiquitous computing technology.

    Information searching and browsing have often been conceptualized as solitary activities; however, they always have a social component. We may talk about ‘the’ searcher or ‘the’ user of a database or information resource. Our focus may be on individual uses and our research may look at individual users. Our experiments may be designed to observe the behaviors of individual subjects. Our models and theories derived from our empirical analyses may focus substantially or exclusively on an individual's evolving goals, thoughts, beliefs, emotions and actions. Nevertheless there are always social aspects of information seeking and use present, both implicitly and explicitly.

    We start by summarizing some of the history of information access with an emphasis on social and collaborative interactions. Then we look at the nature of recommendations, social search and interfaces to support collaboration between information seekers. Following this we consider how the design of interactive information systems is influenced by social elements.

    Background

    The history of organized information is, necessarily, one of social relationships. The organizers structured documents to ease retrieval, possibly for themselves in the first instance, but then for users who wished to access the collection. Personal libraries, organizational libraries, and then public libraries provided access to information resources hundreds of years before computers arrived. These libraries contained, or indeed embodied, two main social relationships between the librarians and the users. The simplest relationship was a dialogue between the information seeker and the librarian, which has evolved into the reference interview. The other relationship was indirect, via the structure of the collection; where the librarians arranged the items to facilitate retrieval. These arrangements have evolved into classification systems such as the Dewey Decimal Classification. As the literary record grew through books and journals the connections between published works, authors, readers and information seekers have become ever more complex.

  • 6 - Access models

  • Edited by Ian Ruthven, Diane Kelly
  • Book:
    Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    31 August 2011, pp 95-112

  • Summary

    Introduction

    From the perspective of the user of an information retrieval system, information retrieval involves a number of compromises, many of which have been discussed elsewhere in this book. The user's information need may be poorly con - ceptualized, and may be poorly expressed in search or query terms. While recognizing the problems inherent in producing a query that is representative of the user's information need, in this chapter we will take the query as the starting point, and look at the means by which the subsequent processing is carried out – at what goes on ‘under the hood’ once the user releases a query to the system.

    For many users of information systems, the process by which their query is compared to millions of documents, resulting in a list in some ranked order, is a mystery. The search engine is a black box, and the processes that occur within it are not at all transparent to the user. This is especially true in the web environment, where the techniques used by search engines are proprietary, and very little published information on retrieval methods is available. This lack of transparency arises in part because of the commercial advantage attached to providing a better search engine (and attracting more users and more advertising revenues), and in part because search engine companies wish to protect themselves against unscrupulous information providers who may use detailed knowledge about the retrieval algorithms to design web pages to receive a high ranking from the search engine, whether or not they are actually relevant to a particular query. A discussion of the problems of information retrieval on the web is provided in Chapter 10, ‘Web Retrieval, Ranking and Personalization’.

    However, despite the lack of transparency about the details of specific search engines, the general principles underlying the techniques used by retrieval engines are well known. These techniques are publicized in the research literature as well as in many textbooks (see, for example, Manning, Raghavan and Schutze, 2008; Croft, Metzler and Strohman, 2009).

  • 13 - Creative reading and insideadog.com.au

    • By Lili Wilkinson, managed Inside a Dog (www.insideadog.com.au) between 2006 and 2011.
  • Edited by Joy Court
  • Book:
    Read to Succeed
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2011, pp 225-238

  • Summary

    Introduction

    We all know that reading is important, especially when it comes to children. But what do we actually mean by reading? Do comic books count? Newspapers? Goosebumps books? What about the internet?

    Australia's Centre for Youth Literature promotes reading for pleasure, through a variety of onsite, offsite and online programs. The primary principle underlying the Centre for Youth Literature programme is access. Within the limitations of current resources, the Centre aims to maximize geographic, social and cultural access to its programme, which of course is greatly expanded through our online programmes, namely the Boys Blokes Books and Bytes blog (boysblokesbooks.edublogs.org), our Read Alert blog for professionals (slv.vic.gov.au/readalert), and, in particular, Inside a Dog (www.insideadog.com.au), our website for young people about books and reading.

    The Centre sits within the State Library of Victoria as part of the Library's youth offer. The State Library strives to provide access to Victorian, Australian and international resources that will enrich young people's cultural, educational, social and economic lives. Its work in achieving these values is informed by the five values of innovation, collaboration, engagement, excellence and respect. Inside a Dog is part of the Library's online offer which, in addition to a corporate site, also includes Ergo – a research skills website and an ongoing digitization project featuring images and manuscripts. The Library also works closely with the State Government Department of Education to develop and manage a series of educationbased web projects in partnership with a number of other cultural institutions.

    Why read?

    Reading brings many more benefits than just improved literacy skills. The rewards of a love of reading last a lifetime: well-being, resilience, communication skills, personal development, imagination, creativity, curiosity.

    The Search Institute in the US (Search Institute, 2007) lists 40 developmental assets for young people to make them become caring, responsible adults. The more assets a young person has, the more likely they are to succeed in school, help others, value diversity, maintain good health, resist danger, exhibit leadership and overcome adversity. They are also less likely to use drugs or alcohol, vandalize, choose violence, skip school or become depressed and/or suicidal. One of the key assets is Reading for Pleasure, which goes hand in hand with related assets such as Creative Activities, Community Values Youth and School Engagement.

Managing Records in Global Financial Markets
  • Ensuring Compliance and Mitigating Risk
  • Principles and Practice in Records Management and Archives
  • Edited by Lynn Coleman, Victoria Lemieux, Rod Stone, Geoffrey Yeo
  • Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2011
  • Although there are a number of publications covering records management generically, very few are focused on the challenges for business, and global business in particular, and fewer still on regulatory, legal and governance issues associated with managing records in the global banking and financial sector. This book fills the gap by exploring these complex issues and offers strategies and frameworks to meet the record-keeping challenges to which they give rise in investment banking and other global financial services. While the book focuses on the financial sector, it will also be of relevance to multinational businesses in other sectors, covering as it does the issues that arise from operating across borders and in different jurisdictions. The book is divided into four main parts which cover: regulatory and legal compliance, balancing risk and return, litigation-related issues, and record-keeping approaches. Expert contributors to the book come from Europe, North America and Australasia and include legal, regulatory and technology specialists as well as records managers and archivists. Whilst the book reflects recognized records management principles, the accessible language used will assure its value to information professionals and others without a formal records management background. This book will be essential reading for records managers, archivists and information professionals who manage records in the financial sector. It will also be invaluable for individuals in a wide range of disciplines who rely on records, and their effective management, to meet the increasing number of legal and regulatory obligations to which financial institutions and global businesses are now subject. These include compliance professionals, privacy and data protection officers, risk managers and IT specialists, together with the senior managers, directors and chief operating officers who have ultimate accountability for ensuring compliance and mitigating risk.

  • 13 - Establishing a global policy framework for the management of records

  • from Part 4 - Record-keeping approaches
    • By Rod Stone, Global Policy & Oversight for the Royal Bank of Scotland
  • Edited by Lynn Coleman, Victoria Lemieux, Rod Stone, Geoffrey Yeo
  • Book:
    Managing Records in Global Financial Markets
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2011, pp 181-198

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Whatever the size of a financial institution, the spread of its business activities or the number of countries in which it operates, the effective management of its records requires a formally agreed global policy framework, adopted and endorsed at the highest decision-making level.

    The core components of such a framework are a policy, standards (which set out what staff and business units need to do to comply with the policy) and a records retention schedule. The policy should include a clear statement of roles and responsibilities at all levels. In addition to the core components, the framework should include guidance on how the standards can be implemented, and training and compliance testing to ensure that staff are aware of, understand and fulfil their various responsibilities. Monitoring and control will be required to ensure that all business units are compliant. Such a framework is the foundation upon which sound records management practice is built and records management processes, business classification schemes, office procedure manuals and guides can be developed to address local requirements.

    Particularly with larger and more complex institutions, the development of the policy framework needs to be collaborative and to involve wide consultation. Individuals across all parts of the institution, and at all levels, should be part of the development process and regularly consulted throughout its formation; with more stakeholders, extended discussion and negotiation may be required to reach a common understanding.

    Numerous functional stakeholders have an interest in the management of records, in particular audit, compliance, legal (including some specialists, particularly litigation, data protection and privacy), information security, technology and operational risk functions. In this chapter, these will be referred to collectively as ‘key functions’.

    Policy

    A records management policy can be characterized as a high-level statement that defines key terms, sets out the principles for the management of records created, captured and maintained by a business and stipulates the roles and responsibilities of all the relevant stakeholders. When agreed, it becomes in effect a charter or memorandum of understanding between the key functions and all other stakeholders that enables them to work together to manage the institution's records effectively.

  • 12 - Discovery and records management

  • from Part 3 - Litigation-related issues
  • Edited by Lynn Coleman, Victoria Lemieux, Rod Stone, Geoffrey Yeo
  • Book:
    Managing Records in Global Financial Markets
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2011, pp 165-178

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Business disputes in the form of litigation can be small or large, from individual client challenges to major class action suits about particular business activities. Litigation is not new to the financial sector. Commercial litigation, intellectual property disputes, class action suits and wrongful dismissal claims are all forms of civil litigation to which financial institutions may be subject.

    Financial institutions are faced with a number of challenges in preparing for litigation. One of the biggest is, where is the evidence and information that will support the case and provide a defence? Institutions may be subject to discovery requests (known as disclosure requests in some countries); these are legally binding requests for the retrieval and production of records deemed relevant to a lawsuit. In such cases, a ‘legal hold’ may be applied to the institution's records; ‘legal hold’ indicates that potentially relevant records must not be destroyed when litigation is pending or in progress. In litigation, legal holds, records management and discovery come together. This chapter examines several aspects of the relationship between discovery in civil lawsuits and records management in a North American context.

    Electronically stored information, records and litigation

    Much of a financial institution's information is to be found in its records and record-keeping systems. Over the past 15 years, organizations have moved from paper-based to electronic record creation and keeping, and the majority of business is now carried out electronically. Electronic records are sometimes referred to as ‘electronically stored information’ or ESI. In today's workplace we talk about records, documents, data, content and information; depending on the audience and the area of practice, each term can be interpreted to mean something different.

    The volume of information created by financial institutions is increasing, as are the complexities of managing it. How and why is the information created? Where is it stored? Is it within the company, outsourced to a third-party contractor or out there in the ‘cloud’? These questions arise because ESI can be:

  • • easy to copy and distribute

  • • hard to dispose of (you may think it has gone, but a computer forensic specialist may be able to retrieve it even if it has been deleted)

  • • changed automatically (e.g. when systems are migrated, dates may be changed on all documents, resulting in ‘creation’ dates being captured as the date of the migration rather than the actual date on which the document was created)

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Lynn Coleman, Victoria Lemieux, Rod Stone, Geoffrey Yeo
  • Book:
    Managing Records in Global Financial Markets
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2011, pp xvii-xxx

  • Summary

    There are few books that address the management of records in the business world and fewer still that discuss records management in the context of global financial markets.

    Companies operating in these markets are subject to particular pressures that arise from the need to address the requirements of different financial regulatory bodies across the world; more generally, companies with a global reach need to be aware of, and comply with, the laws of each different jurisdiction in which they operate. Although many of the record-keeping issues that large companies face are similar to those encountered by small and medium-sized businesses and by public sector organizations, these particular pressures are unique to, or especially significant in, the financial sector. The global financial sector encompasses a variety of different types of companies ranging from investment banks and fund managers to hedge funds. The structure of financial markets and the types of companies that operate within them are discussed more fully in Chapter 1 ‘Global financial markets’. For clarity, all of these companies are normally referred to in this book as ‘financial institutions’.

    The book focuses on regulatory, legal and governance issues associated with managing records in financial institutions and on records-related risks that financial institutions may face. The purpose of the book is to explore these issues and to offer recommendations for meeting the challenges to which they give rise. The book aims to cover the major record-keeping issues that global financial institutions need to address, and its contributing authors have been selected for their expertise in one or more of these areas. Underpinning the book is a conviction that, if a financial institution is aware of the need for good recordkeeping and takes action to build a sound records management programme, it will be more readily equipped to provide evidence of its decisions and actions, demonstrate compliance and respond to investigations and litigation. If it does not do so, sooner or later a crisis will arise and the institution will face the costs, risks and disruption of having to create large crisis management teams at short notice.

  • 7 - There and back again: restoring reading to the classroom

    • By Bridget Hamlet, BSc degree in English and Secondary Education from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and an Instructional Media licence
  • Edited by Joy Court
  • Book:
    Read to Succeed
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    08 June 2018
    Print publication:
    23 August 2011, pp 107-130

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Reading books for enjoyment in the classroom has been endangered by the emphasis given in the English national curriculum to reading and analysing extracts. As a result, some children may leave school without ever having read a whole book and many teachers become disillusioned. This chapter follows one young teacher's journey from the American Midwest to the English West Midlands; from idyllic teaching to disillusion in the classroom – and, ultimately, to inspiration in the library. It will examine the skills shared between teachers and school librarians, thereby empowering school librarians to be the instigators of a veritable reading revolution. And finally, it will provide practical ideas which school librarians and teachers can deploy to bring reading for pleasure back into the classroom.

    First of all, let me enlist your confidence by stating my credentials. I'm not an expert in any field. I haven't won any awards. I haven't invented anything. I am married, with two small children and two small dogs. I live in a house and drive a car. I watch rubbish television and fall asleep on the sofa. I hate doing the dishes and have a minor obsession with tea towels. I'm just normal. The only thing that might separate me from most people is that I love my job. Absolutely, 100%, without doubt. Sometimes I feel guilty about saying that, like it's a confession: I'm a school librarian and I love my job.

    Of course it wasn't always this way. Nine years ago I loved my job – and I was a teacher. But just one year later, still working as a teacher, I would have said: ‘I'm a teacher and my job makes me cry. Every day. I'm a total failure. I want to quit, but if I do I will be deported.’ And that lasted for nearly four years. So what had happened from one year to the next?

    I had moved to England.

    The teaching experience in America …

    Memories are always rose tinted, so I like to believe I was a great teacher in Wisconsin. My final student teaching experience was half in a traditional high school and half in a ground-breaking charter school (these are publically funded but privately governed schools which must demonstrate success or lose their charter).

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