Sharing encountered information: digital libraries get a social life

ABSTRACT

As part of a more extensive study of reading-related practices, we have explored how people share information they encounter in their everyday reading as a complement to the more traditional digital library focus on sharing intentionally retrieved materials. In twenty contextual interviews in home and work place settings, we investigated how people encounter and save published material in the form of paper and electronic clippings. We found that sharing forms a significant use for encountered materials. Furthermore, the function of these clippings extends far beyond a simple exchange of content to inform the recipient; in fact, the content itself may have little immediate value to the recipient. We also found the practice to be ubiquitous: all of our participants had both shared clippings with others and received them themselves. Specifically, this paper reports on: (1) how sharing encountered items fits into the broader spectrum of clipping practices; (2) the function and value of the shared information; and (3) the social role of sharing the encountered information We conclude that from a technological standpoint, we should think beyond an email model for sharing encountered information and, from a social perspective, we should attend to how sharing this sort of material contributes to the strength of social ties outside of a traditional information needs framework.

REFERENCES

• 1: Mark S. Ackerman, Augmenting organizational memory: a field study of answer garden, ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), v.16 n.3, p.203-224, July 1998 [doi>10.1145/290159.290160]
• 2: Bates, M. The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface Online Review, 13, 5 (October 1989), 407--424.
• 3: Belkin, N. J, Oddy, R. N, and Brooks, H. M. ASK for Information Retrieval: Part I Background and Theory Journal of Documentation, 38, 2 (1982), 61--71.
• 4: J. J. Cadiz , Gina Venolia , Gavin Jancke , Anoop Gupta, Designing and deploying an information awareness interface, Proceedings of the 2002 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, November 16-20, 2002, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA [doi>10.1145/587078.587122]
• 5: Elizabeth F. Churchill , Jonathan Trevor , Sara Bly , Les Nelson , Davor Cubranic, Anchored conversations: chatting in the context of a document, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.454-461, April 01-06, 2000, The Hague, The Netherlands [doi>10.1145/332040.332475]
• 6: Donald Cox , Saul Greenberg, Supporting collaborative interpretation in distributed Groupware, Proceedings of the 2000 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.289-298, December 2000, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/358916.359000]
• 7: Dervin, B. Chaos, Order, and Sense-Making: A Proposed Theory for Information Design In Information Design (R. Jacobson, ed.) MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999, 35--57.
• 8: Sanda Erdelez, Information encountering: a conceptual framework for accidental information discovery, Proceedings of an international conference on Information seeking in context, p.412-421, August 1997, Tampere, Finland
• 9: Erdelez, S. (1999) Information Encountering: It's More Than Just Bumping into Information Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, 25, 3 (Feb 1999), 25--29. http://www asis org/Bulletin/Feb--99/erdelez html
• 10: Sanda Erdelez , Kevin Rioux, Sharing information encountered for others on the Web, The New Review of Information Behaviour Research, v.1 n.January, p.219-233, 2000
• 11: Jones, W., Dumais, S., and Bruce, H. Once found, what then?: a study of "keeping" behaviors in personal use of Web information In Proceedings of ASIST 2002 (Philadelphia, PA, USA, November 18--21, 2002) Information Today, Inc., Medford, NJ, 2002, 391--402.
• 12: Marchionini, G., Plaisant, C., and Komlodi, A The People in Digital Libraries: Multifaceted Approaches to Assessing Needs and Impact In Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and Evaluation (A. Bishop, N. Van House, and B. Buttenfield, eds.) MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003, 119--160.
• 13: Nardi, B. and O'Day, V. L. Intelligent Agents: What We Learned at the Library Libri, 46, 2 (1996), 59--88.
• 14: Vicki L. O'Day , Robin Jeffries, Information artisans: patterns of result sharing by information searchers, Proceedings of the conference on Organizational computing systems, p.98-107, November 01-04, 1993, Milpitas, California, United States [doi>10.1145/168555.168566]
• 15: Karen E. Pettigrew , Joan C. Durrance , Kenton T. Unruh, Facilitating community information seeking using the internet: findings from three public library-community network systems, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v.53 n.11, p.894-903, September 6 2002 [doi>10.1002/asi.10120]
• 16: Pettigrew, K. E., Fidel, R., & Bruce, H. Conceptual frameworks in information behavior Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST), 35 (2001), 43--78.
• 17: Quan-Haase, A. and Wellman, B. How does the Internet Affect Social Capital Forthcoming in IT and Social Capital (M Huysman and V Wulf, eds.) http://www chass utoronto ca/wellman/publications/internetsocialcapital/Net_SC--09 pdf.
• 18: Rioux, K. S. Sharing information found for others on the World Wide Web: A preliminary examination. In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science (Chicago, IL, Nov 13--16, 2000) Information Today, Inc, Medford, NJ, 2000, 68--77.
• 19: Frank Shipman , Robert Airhart , Haowei Hsieh , Preetam Maloor , J. Michael Moore , Divya Shah, Visual and spatial communication and task organization using the visual knowledge builder, Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work, September 30-October 03, 2001, Boulder, Colorado, USA [doi>10.1145/500286.500325]
• 20: Toms, E. G. Serendipitous Information Retrieval Proceedings of the First DELOS Network of Excellence Workshop on Information Seeking, Searching and Querying in Digital Libraries (Zurich, Switzerland, December 11--12, 2000) http://www ercim org/publication/ws--proceedings/DelNoe01/3_Toms pdf.
• 21: Clarie M. Vishik, Internal information brokering and patterns of usage on corporate intranets, Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work: the integration challenge, p.111-118, November 16-19, 1997, Phoenix, Arizona, United States [doi>10.1145/266838.266878]
• 22: Wellman B., Haase, A. Q., Witte, J., and Hampton, K. Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social Capital? Social Networks, Participation, and Community Commitment American Behavioral Scientist, 45, 3 (Nov 2001), 436--455.
• 23: Williamson, K. Discovered by chance: The role of incidental information acquisition in an ecological model of information use Library & Information Science Research, 20, 1 (1998), 23--40.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.7 Digital Libraries
          Subjects: User issues

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Evaluation/methodology
      H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces
          Subjects: Computer-supported cooperative work

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Human Factors, Performance

Keywords:
browsing, clipping, collaboration, electronic periodicals, encountered information, field study, interaction, reading