Elicitation behavior during online searching: towards a grammar of interactive information retrieval

Spink, Amanda H. and Goodrum, Abby and Robins, David (1998) Elicitation behavior during online searching: towards a grammar of interactive information retrieval. Information Processing and Management, 34(2/3). pp. 257-273.

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DOI: 10.1016/S0306-4573(97)00059-9

Abstract

What elicitations or requests for information do search intermediaries make of users with information requests during an information retrieval (IR) interaction -- including prior to and during an IR interaction -- and for what purpose? These issues were investigated during a study of elicitations during 40 mediated IR interactions. A total of 1557 search intermediary elicitations were identified within 15 purpose categories. The elicitation purposes of search intermediaries included requests for information on search terms and strategies, database selection, search procedures, system’s outputs and relevance of retrieved items, and users’ knowledge and previous information-seeking. These findings are compared with results from a study of end-user questions (Nahl & Tenopir, 1996) and a study of user elicitations of search intermediaries (Wu, 1993). Implications of the findings for the development of a dialogue-based model of IR interaction based on a grammar of IR interaction framework and the design of IR systems are also discussed.

ID Code:	4980
Item Type:	Journal Article
Additional Information:	A version of this paper was first presented at the ACM SIGIR conference in Zurich, Switzerland (Spink, Goodrum, Robins & Wu, 1996)
Keywords:	information retrieval, searching behaviour, information systems
ISSN:	0306-4573
Subjects:	Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification > INFORMATION AND COMPUTING SCIENCES (080000) > LIBRARY AND INFORMATION STUDIES (080700) > Information Retrieval and Web Search (080704)
Divisions:	QUT Faculties and Divisions > Faculty of Science and Technology
Copyright Owner:	Copyright 1998 Elsevier
Copyright Statement:	Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.
Deposited On:	12 Sep 2006
Last Modified:	23 Jan 2009 02:46

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