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Information Seeking Support Systems An invitational workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation June 26-27, 2008 Chapel Hill, NC USA http://ils.unc.edu/ISSS/ Organizers: Gary Marchionini, UNC-Chapel Hill, USA Co-Chair Ryen White, Microsoft, USA Co-Chair Nick Belkin, Rutgers University, USA Gene Golovchinsky, FxPAL, USA Diane Kelly, UNC-Chapel Hill, USA Peter Pirolli, Xerox PARC, USA mc schraefel, U. Southhampton, UK Report: May 2009 NSF Workshop on Information Seeking Support Systems 1 http://ils.unc.edu/ISSS/ NSF Workshop Report on Information Seeking Support Systems Participants James Allan, Univ. of Massachusetts Bill Kules, Catholic Univ. of America Peter Anick, Yahoo Michael Levi, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Anne Aula, Google Gary Marchionini, UNC Nick Belkin, Rutgers Univ. David Millen, IBM Peter Brusilovsky, Univ. of Pittsburgh Jan Pedersen, Yahoo Robert Capra, UNC Peter Pirolli, PARC Ed Chi, PARC Edie Rasmussen, Univ. of British Columbia Susan Dumais, Microsoft Dan Rose, A9 Efthimis Efthimiadis, Univ. of Washington Dan Russell, Google Gary Geisler, Univ. of Texas m.c. Schraefel, Univ. of Southampton Gene Golovchinsky, FxPAL Ben Shneiderman, Univ. of Maryland Steve Griffin, NSF Elaine Toms, Dalhousie Brad Hemminger, UNC Daniel Tunkelang, Endeca Diane Kelly, UNC Ryen White, Microsoft Acknowledgements This workshop was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (#115-0836616) The workshop organizers greatly appreciate… Maria Zemankova, our National Science Foundation Program Manager, and Steve Griffin who participated in the workshop Rachael Clemens, for administering and coordinating logistics the workshop The School of Information and Library Science and UNC Chapel Hill for hosting the workshop and providing meeting rooms. NSF Workshop on Information Seeking Support Systems 2 http://ils.unc.edu/ISSS/ Table of Contents Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................6 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................7 Information Seeking Support Systems .....................................................................................7 Gary Marchionini, Ryen White Models ...........................................................................................................................................11 Powers of 10: Modeling Complex Information Seeking Systems at Multiple Scales .........11 Peter Pirolli Position Papers and Featured Research Complex and Exploratory Web Search .........................................................................23 Anne Aula and Daniel Russell Really Supporting Information Seeking: A Position Paper .........................................25 Nicholas J. Belkin Speaking the Same Language About Exploratory Information Seeking ...................27 Bill Kules Characterizing, Supporting and Evaluating Exploratory Search ...............................30 Edie Rasmussen The Information-Seeking Funnel ...................................................................................32 Daniel Rose Five Challenges for Research to Support IS3 ................................................................36 Elaine Toms Social Search.................................................................................................................................39 Information Seeking can be Social .........................................................................................39 Ed Chi Collaborative Information Seeking ........................................................................................46 Gene Golovchinsky, Pernilla Qvarfordt, Jeremy Pickens Position Papers and Featured Research Better Exploratory Search through Social Bookmarking ............................................51 David Millen Social Bookmarking and Information Seeking .............................................................53 David Millen NSF Workshop on Information Seeking Support Systems 3 http://ils.unc.edu/ISSS/ Tools and Techniques ..................................................................................................................55 Designing Information-Seeking Support Systems .................................................................55 Ryen W. White Building Knowledge: What’s Beyond Keyword Search? .....................................................59 m.c. schraefel Position Papers and Featured Research Supporting Interaction and Familiarity ........................................................................70 James Allen From Web Search to Exploratory Search: Can we get there from here? ..................73 Peter Anick Transparent and User-Controllable Personalization For Information Exploration .77 Peter Brusilovsky Faceted Exploratory Search Using the Relation Browser............................................81 Robert Capra, Gary Marchionini Relation Browser Tool for Information Seeking ...........................................................84 Robert Capra Building Blocks For Rapid Development of Information Seeking Support Systems 85 Gary Geisler NeoNote: User Centered Design Suggestions for a Global Shared Scholarly Annotation System ...........................................................................................................89 Brad Hemminger Musings on Information Seeking Support Systems ......................................................92 Michael Levi ContextMiner: Explore Globally, Aggregate Locally ...................................................94 Chirag Shah Research Agenda: Visual Overviews for Exploratory Search .....................................96 Ben Shneiderman Evaluation .....................................................................................................................................98 Evaluation Challenges and Directions for Information-Seeking Support Systems ...........98 Diane Kelly, Susan Dumais, Jan O. Pedersen Position Papers and Featured Research Designing Exploratory Search Tasks for Evaluation of Information Seeking Support Systems ............................................................................................................................105 Bill Kules, Robert Capra Making Sense of Search Result Pages ..........................................................................107 Jan Pedersen The Measurement Dilemma for ISSS ..........................................................................109 Elaine Toms, Heather O’Brien NSF Workshop on Information Seeking Support Systems 4 http://ils.unc.edu/ISSS/ Resolving the Battle Royale between Information Retrieval and Information Science .............................................................................................................................111 Daniel Tunkelang Precision AND Recall ....................................................................................................114 Daniel Tunkelang Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................115 Industry-Academic Relationships .........................................................................................115 Daniel M. Russell Call to Action ..............................................................................................................................117 Workshop Schedule ...................................................................................................................118 NSF Workshop on Information Seeking Support Systems 5 http://ils.unc.edu/ISSS/ Executive Summary This report defines research and development challenges related to Information Seeking Support Systems. It includes papers and examples from a NSF‐sponsored workshop held in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in June 2008 and subsequent papers published as a special issue of Computer in March 2009. The adoption of web search technologies have led people to expect immediate and easy access to information in all aspects of life. Web‐based search services have become fundamental components of the cyberinfrastructure that supports economic growth and social advance. Although we have built a base set of expectations for search, human needs for information go beyond search to filtering, assessing, sensemaking, synthesizing, and using information to meet our needs and create new knowledge. Our nation and our world depend on citizens who are able to seek, assess, understand, and use diverse kinds of information. Much of the information we need is complex with different components held in disparate electronic sources and many of our efforts to gather, assess, and use this information are done in collaboration with others. Additionally, much of the information we need is not discretely anticipated, but rather emerges as seeking and reflection continues over time. Information seeking in the digital age is a kind of problem solving activity that demands agile and symbiotic coordination of human and cyber resources; in short, a fundamental kind of computationally‐ augmented thinking. Computation has expanded our ability to do scalable what if thinking that leverages the best capabilities of humans and machines to abstract, synthesize, and iterate intellectual actions, and today’s search engines are the primitives on the technical side of information seeking. We must rise to the challenge to move information seeking from search engine support that
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