Thus far in our series on Collaborative Information Seeking we have explored two dimensions: Intent and Synchronization. The next dimension is the Depth at which the mediation (aka support, facilitation) of the multi-user search process occurs.

We can talk about three levels of mediation: communications tools independent of the search engine (e.g., chat, e-mail, voice, etc.), UI-level mediation, and algorithmic mediation. The first level typifies most searching currently being performed on the web, whereas the other two are more commonly found in research prototypes. Continue Reading

For quite a while now Jeremy and I have been characterizing collaborative exploratory search, and distinguishing it from other kinds of searches. While so far the exercise has been largely theoretical, and sometimes has been met with skepticism. Well, in Tuesday’s Washington Post, I found a passage that illustrates the kinds of activities we are talking about.

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A week or so ago, we wrote a post on Social Search, and how (we believe) it is different from Collaborative Search.  We have also begun laying out a taxonomy of the various factors or dimensions that characterize information seeking behaviors involving more than one person.  So far, we have listed two dimensions: Intent and Synchronization.  We will continue with two additional dimensions over the next few weeks: Depth and Location.

But in the meantime, we note that Intent and Synchronization already give us enough material to draw descriptive and discriminatory lines between various types of multi-user search.

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This is the third post by Jeremy and me in a series on collaborative information seeking. The first was an introduction to the space, and the second dealt with the topic of collaborative intent. This post deals with synchronization of data that underlies the collaboration. While it is possible to collaborate in searching for information without tool support by exchanging URLs or documents directly, more interesting interactions are possible when they are mediated by the search system.

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Recently, a new class of search applications that support collaborative information seeking has emerged. In these systems, users work in small groups with a shared information need, rather than relying on large numbers of anonymous users with potentially diverging information needs. One clear way to distinguish different social search activities has been proposed by Colum Foley. In his PhD thesis, he characterizes search systems on two dimensions, “Sharing of Knowledge” and “Division of labor.”  Sharing of knowledge separates all social search systems from traditional single-user approaches, while division of labor separates social search from collaborative search.

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This is Part 2 of (at least) 5 in a series of posts about Collaborative Information Seeking.  Part 1 is found here.

The most important dimension for distinguishing between various types of collaboration is the intent with which users of a system approach each other for the collaboration.

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What does it mean to collaborate while searching?

There are many different ways to characterize collaborative information seeking, many dimensions on which collaborative search systems can be categorized.

For the past few years Jeremy Pickens and I have been thinking that our model of collaborative exploratory search needs some further explication. Or maybe we’re just trying to understand it better ourselves. We have found that to explain what our model is, we have to simultaneously explain what our model is not.  This has led to numerous discussions not only about the various dimensions of collaboration, but also about the relative importance among those dimensions for distinguishing between systems.

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Last June, Gary Marchionini hosted a workshop on Information Seeking Support Systems, which I was privileged to attend. The workshop brought together researchers from industry and academia for two days of stimulating discussion about systems, models of information seeking, and evaluation. One of the results of the workshop was a Special Issue of IEEE Computer that Gary and Ryen White edited.

We published a position paper at the workshop, and followed up with an article for the special issue, out today. We look broadly at collaboration in information seeking, including some motivating scenarios of use, a model of the design space, and a short discussion of roles.

This is the same issue that Daniel mentions in his post.

Update: IEEE says they are undergoing a “software changeover”, and expect the TOC to be up early next week.

Update 2: The online copy is now available from IEEE and on our web site.

Meredith Ringel Morris, Jeremy Pickens and I are editing a Special Issue of Information Processing & Management on Collaborative Information Seeking. Our goal is to bring together papers that describe explicit (intentional) collaboration during various aspects of online information seeking. In contract to recommendation or collaborative filtering work, we are looking for work that describes small groups of people working toward a common goal.

The deadline for submission is May 8, 2009.

More details on the call are available here.