Task‐based information searching

Abstract

IntroductionThe rationale for using information systems is to find information that helps us in our daily activities, be they tasks or interests. Systems are expected to support us in searching for and identifying useful information. Although the activities and tasks performed by humans generate information needs and searching, they have attracted little attention in studies of information searching. Such studies have concentrated on search tasks rather than the activities that trigger them. It is obvious that our understanding of information searching is only partial, if we are not able to connect aspects of searching to the related task. The expected contribution of information to the task is reflected in relevance assessments of the information items found, and in the search tactics and use of the system in general. Taking the task into account seems to be a necessary condition for understanding and explaining information searching, and, by extension, for effective systems design. Scope and ApproachIn this chapter, I shall review studies on the relationship between task performance and information searching by end-users. I focus mainly on 41 3 414 Annual Review of information Science and Technology information searching in electronic environments, especially in information retrieval (IR) systems. The process of information searching is cyclical, but it can be broken down into the following components:The kind of information that is needed and searched forThe query formulation process, including the choice of search terms and operators Search tacticsThe use of search support tools Relevance and utility judgments regarding the information found Several approaches to characterizing tasks in the literature are in use. In the studies I have found on information searching, tasks have been either characterized as a process consisting of several stages, or this aspect has been left open. In the latter case, the task has been treated as a given and left without characterization; only its context being described. A typical example is observing university students searching for information for study purposes without explicating those purposes. In these studies, the point of departure is searching, not the work task that produces it.Only a limited number of studies relate tasks to searching. Because of this, I take into account studies based on natural search goals, insofar as they further our understanding of task-based searching. I also review a few studies based on assigned search goals. In general, the models and findings are scattered and difficult to integrate into the framework of task-based searching.Ideally, a study should connect the task with the search process in order to analyze their interaction (Belkin, 1990). This sort of study typically requires a longitudinal research design. Due to the rarity of such process analyses, studies that analyze the relation between tasks and searching synchronously are also included. I focus principally on the literature published after 1990 simply because the number of empir...

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