2^ndInternational Workshop on
Collaborative Information Seeking

Authors: Zhen Yue; Daqing He
Title: Exploring Collaborative Information Behavior in Context: A Case Study of E-discovery

Abstract:
The University of Pittsburgh team participated in the interactive task of Legal Track in TREC 2009. We conducted a pilot study to investigate into the collaborative information behavior (CIB) of a group of people working on an e-discovery task provided by Legal Track in TREC 2009. Through the pilot study, we proposed a model for understanding CIB in e-discovery.

Authors: Karthikeyan Umapathy
Title: Requirements to support Collaborative Sensemaking

Abstract:
Collaborative sensemaking occurs when a group of people with diverse backgrounds engage in the process of making sense of information rich, complex and dynamic situations. Our understanding of collaborative sensemaking and critical functionalities to support such sensemaking is limited. In this paper, based on review of relevant literature, we outline a set of broad requirements critical for supporting collaborative sensemaking. Requirements identified are: support for creating explicit representations, support co-existence of different representations, support for developing shared representation, support for creating representations using templates, providing workspace for developing shared representations, support for building consensus and reaching agreement, support for facilitating and moderating interactions, support for exchanging documents, and support for retrieving and visualizing information. We argue that a collaborative systems designed to satisfy above requirements would provide better support for collaborative sensemaking activities.

Authors: Arvind Karunakaran, Patricia Ruma Spence, Madhu Reddy
Title: Towards a Model of Collaborative Information Behavior

Abstract:
The research area of Collaborative Information Behavior (CIB) has received increased interest in recent years. Various studies conducted within organizational as well as non-organizational settings have provided us with many key insights about CIB. However, the research area is still relatively young and is at a preparadigmatic stage. Although there are a growing number of CIB-related studies, we still do not have a canonical definition of CIB. The demarcations among Collaborative Information Behavior, Collaborative Information Seeking (CIS) and Collaborative Information Retrieval (CIR) are not very clear. Consequently, there are a variety of perspectives on CIB. In this paper, we discuss both the Social and Technical perspectives within CIB, and present a model illustrating the various activities that make up CIB. Finally, we discuss the potential usefulness of the model in bridging the gap between the social and technical streams of CIB research, and ask for suggestions concerning subsequent improvements that could be made to the model. The contribution of this position paper is in developing an early CIB model and in envisioning CIB as a set of activities that occurs across multiple phases.

Authors: Chirag Shah
Title: Working in Collaboration - What, Why, and How?

Abstract:
Many situations call for collaboration, but there is still a lack of understanding about the process of collaboration, and the explicit support for facilitating it. We are interested in understanding instances, motivations, and methods of such collaboration, specifically in information seeking domain. Our goal is to use this understanding in developing better tools and services for the collaborators. The present article reports the beginning of our exploration in this direction. We interviewed a handful of people, including graduate students and faculty members, working in the field of information and library science. During these personal interviews, we asked them about various situations and scenarios of collaboration that they had been involved with or observed in the past. While describing these instances of collaboration, they were also asked to provide information regarding their motivations and methods for working on those collaborative projects. Here we provide these ‘what’ (instances), ‘why’ (motivations), and ‘how’ (methods) of collaboration, identifying common trends, and linking them with the CSCW literature. Implications of these findings and pointers to further exploration are also given.

Authors: Robert Capra, Katrina Muller, Javier Velasco-Martin
Title: Classifications of Collaborative Search

Abstract:
We present a set of three collaborative styles that were reported by participants in an interview study we conducted in the summer of 2009 to investigate exploratory and collaborative search behaviors. We give examples of each style from our data and comment on how the styles relate to existing classification schemes and models. We highlight the nature of tight versus loose coupling and how styles may vary based on task, expertise, and the relationship of the collaborators.

Authors: Thomas Erickson
Title: A Social Proxy for Collective Search

Abstract:
The paper is concerned with supporting synchronous collective search carried out online by distributed participants. It presents a user interface that uses a social proxy – a shared visualization that shows the presence and activities of participants – to support the collective search. It lays out a design rationale, discusses characteristics of a solution, and illustrates it with an example.

Authors: Rosta Farzan and Peter Brusilovsky
Title: Effect of Interpersonal Trust on Social Information Seeking

Abstract:
With information growing at an exponential pace the information access tools that have served us well in the past are now cracking under the weight of the Web. Social navigation support in information space has been created as a response to the problem of disorientation in information space. Studies show the success of social navigation support in attracting users’ attention and guiding them through complex information space. However little is known about how effectiveness of social navigation support interact with individual or situational characteristics. The goal of this work is to study the effect of individual’s interpersonal trust level on social navigation support in the context of information seeking. The result of our study shows that users with different level of interpersonal trust follow social navigation support differently.

Authors: Babajide Osatuyi, David Mendonca
Title: Impact of Time Constraint on Collaborative Information Foraging during the Response to a Simulated Emergency

Abstract:
Emergency Response Organization (EROs) are highly specialized, interdisciplinary information processors tasked with making sense of large-scale disasters and coordinating ongoing response activities. Their work involves seeking and processing (i.e., “handling”) information from a broad range of sources, some of which are held in common, while others are not. This work examines the extent to which prior seeking and handling (i.e., foraging) activities explain current foraging activities during a simulated emergency response task. The data are taken from experiments conducted with groups of experienced response personnel. The results suggest strong temporal dependence in division of effort between seeking and handling activities. However, no such dependence is found in effort devoted to foraging for common versus unique information. We conclude by addressing implications of these results for research on collaboration, as well as for practice.

Authors: Mona Haraty, Syavash Nobarany, Brian Fisher
Title: ExplorationMap: Supporting Collaborative Exploratory Information Seeking

Abstract:
Exploratory information seeking in a knowledge domain, especially in an interdisciplinary area, with the purpose of learning and getting a sense of the domain is a challenge that new researchers are constantly facing. To address this challenge, we suggest a new visualization-based approach for collaborative exploratory information seeking. First, we introduce ExplorationMap, which is a node-link graph visualization of the pathways explored by the user. Then, we discuss how the ExplorationMap can establish the ground for collaboration between researchers, while exploring a knowledge domain. We believe that ExplorationMap can facilitate sensemaking processes as well as learning through exploratory search, all of which we will verify in the next steps.

Authors: Peyina Lin, Michael B. Eisenberg, John Marino
Title: Second Life as an Information Ground: Implications for Collaborative Information Behavior

Abstract:
This paper describes a particular information-seeking-sharing-and-use scenario—“real life” information mediation in Second Life (SL)—to illustrate collaborative information behavior in Second Life. We explore how applying CSCW concepts such as awareness and common ground to the scenario reveal challenges of integrating a new media (SL) with existing collaborative information behavior practices, or vice versa, applying existing information behavior practices in a new media.

Authors: Manas Tungare, Ben Hanrahan, Ricardo Quintana-Castillo, Michael Stewart, Manuel A. Pérez-Quiñones
Title: Collaborative Human Computation as a Means of Information Management

Abstract:
Information seeking in personal information collections such as email is often a solitary activity performed by the owner– user alone. However, information objects such as email that are the products of collaboration are inherently social objects. In this paper, we describe a technique, using email as an example, that exploits the actions of one’s close social network to assist in one’s own information seeking tasks. We note that tagging of email messages is an example of human computation, and then describe a system that enables the tags applied by one user to be shared with other recipients of the same email, thereby amortizing the cost of tagging and email management across all stakeholders. We discuss how such shared tagging contributes to common ground among the participants of a collaborative group, and may be performed with minimal global cognitive load by the sender of the message. We provide scenarios of collaborative information seeking tasks that include sub-tasks such as collaborative information management and synchronous re-finding of previously-encountered information. We wish to examine if such system support for semi-automated tagging reduces email overload for all users, and its impact on collaborative information seeking practices.

Authors: Hans-Jörg Happel and Athanasios Mazarakis
Title: Considering Information Providers in Social Search

Abstract:
The notions of collaborative information seeking (CIS) and social search have extended the classical model of information seeking and retrieval. In its core, CIS and social search acknowledge the existence of multiple users and study their implicit and explicit interactions across various dimensions. In this paper, we argue to further extend the scope by introducing information providers as a separate role to complement the process of information seeking with information provision. We briefly describe prototype implementations and identify a number of future research challenges.

Authors: Sharoda A. Paul and Madhu C. Reddy
Title: A Framework for Sensemaking in Collaborative Information Seeking

Abstract:
An important aspect of collaborative information seeking (CIS) is making sense of the information found, i.e., collaborative sensemaking. We conducted an ethnographic study of the CIS activities of healthcare providers in a hospital emergency department to gain a conceptual understanding of why and how sensemaking occurs during CIS activities. Based on these findings, we discuss a framework of collaborative sensemaking during CIS activities and design implications for supporting sensemaking in collaborative information retrieval tools.

Authors: Max L. Wilson
Title: The Exaggerated Role of Perception Within Collaborative Information Seeking

Abstract:
This position paper proposes a taxonomy of perception in Collaborative Information Seeking. Individual searchers can have limited perceptions of their own information needs. In Collaborative Information Seeking, however, individuals must convey this need to other people, who then may have a limited perception of the message. Further, the information need may be shared by a group and perceived differently by each member. This paper draws upon the notions of perception from key related fields and defines three dimensions of perception in Collaborative Information Seeking: Direction, Communication, and Subject.

Authors: Emre Kiciman
Title: Implicit Search of Social Network Data to Discover Collaborative Search Opportunities

Abstract:
In this paper, we hypothesize that the information people post to social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter can be automatically analyzed to surface potential collaboration opportunities to a user. As people find interesting and useful information on the web, they often share it with their friends and colleagues using Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. Other kinds of information that people post to such social networking sites include status updates, commentary and discussion, questions, and photographs. All of these messages are often an expression of interest in a particular topic or information item and some are an explicit expression of information need as well.