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

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.