[Asis-l] TOC: JASIST Volume 53, Number 9

Tue Jun 11 09:22:09 EDT 2002

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
JASIST
VOLUME 53, NUMBER 9

[Note: URLs for viewing contents of JASIST from past issues are at the
bottom.  Immediately below, the contents of Bert Boyce's "In This
Issue" has been cut into the Table of Contents.]

     EDITORIAL
     In This Issue
     Bert R. Boyce
     693

     RESEARCH

     Information Seeking and Mediated Searching. Part 1. Theoretical 
Framework and Research Design
     Amanda Spink, T.D. Wilson, Nigel Ford, Allen Foster, and David Ellis
     Published online 19 April 2002
     695
   In this issue we begin with the first of four parts of a five part 
series of papers by Spink, Wilson, Ford,
Foster, and Ellis. Spink, et alia, in the first section of this report set 
forth the design of a project to test
whether existing models of the information search process are appropriate 
for an environment of
mediated successive searching which they believe characterizes much 
information seeking behavior.
Their goal is to develop an integrated model of the process.
   Data were collected from 198 individuals, 87 in Texas and 111 in 
Sheffield in the U.K., with individuals
with real information needs engaged in interaction with operational 
information retrieval systems by use of
transaction logs, recordings of interactions with intermediaries, pre, and 
post search interviews,
questionnaire responses, relevance judgments of retrieved text, and 
responses to a test of cognitive
styles. Questionnaires were based upon the Kuhlthau model, the Saracevic 
model, the Ellis model, and
incorporated a visual analog scale to avoid a consistency bias.

     Information Seeking and Mediated Searching. Part 2. Uncertainty and 
Its Correlates
     T.D. Wilson, Nigel Ford, David Ellis, Allen Foster, and Amanda Spink
     Published online 23 April 2002
     704
   In ``Part 2. Uncertainty and Its Correlates,'' where Wilson is the 
primary author, after a review of
uncertainty as a concept in information seeking and decision research, it 
is hypothesized that if the
Kuhlthau problem solving stage model is appropriate the searchers will 
recognize the stage in which they
currently are operating. Secondly to test Wilson's contention that 
operationalized uncertainty would be
useful in characterizing users, it is hypothesized that uncertainty will 
decrease as the searcher proceeds
through problem stages and after the completion of the search. A review of 
pre and post search interviews
reveals that uncertainty can be operationalized, and that academic 
researchers have no difficulty with a
stage model of the information seeking process. Uncertainty is unrelated to 
sex, age, or discipline, but is
related to problem stage and domain knowledge. Both concepts appear robust.

     Information Seeking and Mediated Searching Study. Part 3. Successive 
Searching
     Amanda Spink, T.D. Wilson, Nigel Ford, Allen Foster, and David Ellis
     Published online 30 April 2002
     716
   In ``Part 3. Successive Searching.'' where Spink is the primary author, 
after a review of the work on
successive searching, a portion of the Texas generated data is reviewed for 
insights on how frequently
successive searching occurred, the motivation for its occurrence, and any 
distinctive characteristics of the
successive search pattern. Of 18 mediated searches, half requested a second 
search and a quarter a
third search. All but one seeker reported a need to refine and enhance the 
previous results. Second
searches while characterized as refinements included a significantly higher 
number of items retrieved and
more search cycles. Third searches had the most cycles but less retrieved 
items than the second.
Number of terms utilized did not change significantly and overlap was 
limited to about one in five terms
between first and second searches. No overlap occurred between the second 
and third searches.
Problem solving stage shifts did occur with 2 moving to a later stage after 
the first search, 5 remaining in
the same stage and one reverting to a previous stage. Precision did not 
increase over successive
searches, but partial relevant judgments decreased between the second and 
third search.

     Information Seeking and Mediated Searching. Part 4. Cognitive Styles 
in Information Seeking
     Nigel Ford, T.D. Wilson, Allen Foster, David Ellis, and Amanda Spink
     Published online 30 April 2002
     728
   In ``Part 4. Cognitive Styles in Information Seeking,'' where Ford is 
the primary author, the results of the
application of the Riding's Cognitive Styles Analysis and the Pask's 
holist/serialist portion of the Ford's
Study Process Questionnaire to the 111 U.K. participants. were correlated 
using Spearman's coefficient
with reports of focused thinking, degree of change in the intermediary's 
perception of the problem and
personal knowledge, problem stage, degree of differentiating activity, 
change in problem perception,
engagement in exploring activity, changes in questioning, valuing of 
serendipitous information, and other
variables. The results would indicate that field independent individuals 
report clearer more focused
thinking, see themselves in an earlier problem stage, and report higher 
levels of change in perception of
the problem. Holists value serendipity and report engagement in Kuhlthau's 
exploring stage. They are
seen by intermediaries as exhibiting fewer changes in questioning behavior. 
A fifth section will appear in a
later issue.

     Data Discretization for Novel Relationship Discovery in Information 
Retrieval
     G. Benoit
     Published online 29 April 2002
     736
   A sample of 600 Dialog and Swiss-Prot full text records in genetics and 
molecular biology were parsed
and term frequencies calculated to provide data for a test of Benoit's 
visualization model for retrieval. A
retrieved set is displayed graphically allowing for manipulation of 
document and concept relationships in
real time, which hopefully will reveal unanticipated relationships.

     On Recommending
     Jonathan Furner
     Published online 3 May 2002
     747
   By ``recommending'' Furner refers to collaborative filtering where 
multiple user rankings of items are
used to create a single new ranking for a user, or to a system itself 
generating rankings of items for its
users. This would include document retrieval systems as a subset 
recommending systems in the second
instance, but in the first would make document retrieval system and 
recommending system synonyms.
Information seeking actions are classified either as evaluative 
(determining the worth of an item),
recommending (expressing perceived worth), or informative (examining the 
content of an item). The task
of the information retrieval system is to be to predict the particular 
ordering that the user would specify in a
given context, given complete knowledge of the collection. Citations may be 
considered as the result of
evaluative and recommending decisions by the author, and assigned index 
terms may be considered as
the same sort of decisions by the indexer. The selection of relevant 
documents by a searcher from a list
also involves evaluative and recommending decisions. This suggests that 
searchers should have the
opportunity to bring multiple ranking techniques to bear.

     Domain Visualization using VxInsight  )  [register mark] for Science 
and Technology Management
     Kevin W. Boyack, Brian N. Wylie, and George S. Davidson
     Published online 3 May 2002
     764
   Boyack, Wylie, and Davidson developed VxInsight which transforms 
information from documents into a
landscape representation which conveys information on the implicit 
structure of the data as context for
queries and exploration. From a list of pre-computed similarities it 
creates on a plane an x,y location for
each item, or can compute its own similarities based on direct and 
co-citation linkages. Three-dimensional
overlays are then generated on the plane to show the extent of clustering 
at particular points. Metadata
associated with clustered objects provides a label for each peak from 
common words. Clicking on an
object will provide citation information and answer sets for queries run 
will be displayed as markers on the
landscape. A time slider allows a view of terrain changes over time.
   In a test on the microsystems engineering literature a review article 
was used to provide seed terms to
search Science Citation Index and retrieve 20,923 articles of which 13,433 
were connected by citation to
at least one other article in the set. The citation list was used to 
calculate similarity measures and x.y
coordinates for each article. Four main categories made up the landscape 
with 90% of the articles directly
related to one or more of the four. A second test used five databases: SCI, 
Cambridge Scientific
Abstracts, Engineering Index, INSPEC, and Medline to extract 17,927 unique 
articles by Sandia, Los
Alamos National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 
with text of abstracts and
RetrievalWare 6.6 utilized to generate the similarity measures. The 
subsequent map revealed that despite
some overlap the laboratories generally publish in different areas. A third 
test on 3000 physical science
journals utilized 4.7 million articles from SCI where similarity was the 
un-normalized sum of cites between
journals in both directions. Physics occupies a central position, with 
engineering, mathematics, computing,
and materials science strongly linked. Chemistry is farther removed but 
strongly connected.

     BOOK REVIEWS
     A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information has Shaped the 
United States from Colonial
Times to the Present, edited by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and James W. Cortada
     Julian Warner
     Published online 30 April 2002
     775

     Usability for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work, by Tom Brinck, 
Darren Gergle, and Scott D.
Wood
     Raven Wallace
     Published online 2 May 2002
    775

     CALL FOR PAPERS
     778

     ANNOUNCEMENT
     779
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