Numerous studies of engineers information seeking behavior have found that accessibility was the factor that influenced most their selection of information sources. The concept of accessibility, however, is ambiguous and was given various interpretations by both researchers and engineers. Detailed interviews with 32 engineers, in which they described incidents of personal information seeking in...

The Internet has become a popular source of health information. However, in-depth understanding of the information seeking behaviour of online health information is limited. We conducted an experiment to investigate the information needs and behaviours of health information seekers. This paper reports on a model of behavioural patterns drawn on the experimental results, and implications for des...

This paper provides a set of criteria to evaluate the usability of trader user interfaces with respect to resource discovery. The criteria were identified because trader user interface developers sometimes make unrealistic assumptions about the information seeking behavior of their users, leading to interfaces that are difficult to use for resource discovery. This paper uses some insights from ...

Using semantic technologies for mining and intelligent information access to social media is a challenging, emerging research area. Traditional search methods are no longer able to address the more complex information seeking behaviour in media streams, which has evolved towards sense making, learning, investigation, and social search. Unlike carefully authored news text and longer web context,...

* 0-7803-7952-7/03/$17.00  2003 IEEE. Abstract Groups in risky, time-constrained situations may be confronted with problems that cannot be solved by following predefined procedures. This study explores the impact of various factors on group informationseeking behavior in such situations. A simulated experiment in emergency scenarios was conducted with both expert and novice groups with or with...

This paper evaluates the e-book usage and information seeking and reading behaviour of thousands of business and management students. Comparisons are made with students in other subjects. The data largely come from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded National e-Books Observatory (NeBO) project as well as the JISC User Behaviour Observational Study. The main sources of data wer...

This article explores the relationship between the concept of uncertainty in information seeking, within a model of the problem-solving process proposed by Wilson (1999a) and variables derived from other models and from the work of Ellis and Kuhlthau. The research has involved longitudinal data collection in the United States and United Kingdom employing three interview schedules (incorporating...

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 s...

This paper presents findings from a study of information seeking behaviour by National Health Service patients which explored motivational triggers for infor- mation needs. Previous research has highlighted the importance of contextual elements in users' changing information needs. This paper highlights how those needs may centre on specific events: in particular, a patient's consultation with ...

A two-year study of Web portal use in a large university has found a number of results that can help in management decision making about the use of university Web portals as a communication channel. The study involved the collection and analysis of Web usage statistics for a business information technology school in a large city university over a two-year period. Findings initially indicate tha...