1. Information Seeking Behavior
LIS 510

2. Introduction Every day we are deluged by data
It is received through our five senses, which are continuously at work
Wide variety of input sources
Written material (hard copy and electronic)
Auditory (speech, radio, CDs, etc.)
Imagery (photographs, graphs, etc.)
Video (TV, movies, etc.)

3. Information Overload
“The greatest problem of today is how to teach people to ignore the irrelevant, how to refuse to know things, before they are suffocated. For too many facts are as bad as none at all.” (W.H. Auden)

4. Information Theory Claude Shannon, 1940’s, studying communication
Ways to measure information
Communication: producing the same message at its destination as that seen at its source
Problem: a “noisy channel” can distort the message
Between transmitter and receiver, the message must be encoded
Semantic aspects are irrelevant
Noise
Channel
Receiver
Desti-nation
Message source
Trans-mitter

5. Information Theory Better called “Communication Theory”
Communication may be over time and space
Source
Decoding
Encoding
Destination
Message
Channel
Storage
Source
Decoding
(Retrieval/Reading)
Encoding
(writing/indexing)
Destination
Message

6. What kinds of information are there?
Text
books, periodicals, WWW, memos, ads
published/refeered
Film
Photos, other Images
Broadcast TV, Radio
Telephone Conversations
Databases

7. How much information is there?

8. How Much Information? Stored Information Communicated Print Film
Optical
Magnetic
Communicated
Internet
Broadcast
Phone
Mail

9. Print Annual Production Books 968,735 = 8 Terabytes (compressed image)
Newspapers = 25 Terabytes
Journals = Terabytes
Magazines = 10 Terabytes
Office Documents 12x10^9 pages = 312 Terabytes
TOTAL 357 Terabytes (1824 scanned, 35 text)

10. Print Library of Congress Printed book collection Books in Print
About 18 Million books
About 130 Terabytes (compressed image)
For all of LC we should also assume
13M photographs, 5MB each = 65 TB
4M maps, say 200 TB
500K files, 1GB each = 500 TB
3.5M sound recordings, ~2000 TB
Grand total: 3 petabytes (~3000 terabytes)
Books in Print
3.2 Million titles
About 26 Terabytes

11. Film and Image Film Photographs = 410 Petabytes per year
Movies = 16 Terabytes (Commercial Production of about 4000 films)
X-Rays = 12 Petabytes

12. Optical Media CD-Music 90,000 items = 58 TB CD-ROM 3,000 items = 3 TB
DVD-Video 5,000 items = 22 TB
Total TB

13. Magnetic Media Audio Tape 184,200,000 = 184.2 Petabytes
Video Tape 355,000,000 = 1420
Floppy disks = 0.07
Removable disks = 1.69
Hard Disks = 500

14. Medium Type of content Terabytes/Year Terabytes/Year
Upper Bound Lower Bound
Paper
Books
Newspapers
Periodicals
Office documents
SUBTOTAL
Film
Photographs , ,000
Cinema
X-Rays , ,000
SUBTOTAL , ,016
Optical
Music CDs
Data CDs
DVDs
SUBTOTAL
Magnetic
Camcorder , ,000
Disk drives ,555, ,000,20
SUBTOTAL ,855, ,300,200
TOTAL ,277, ,412,632

15. Current Size of Web
There are an estimated 2.1 Billion pages on the Web
About 21 Terabytes
About 7500 further Terabytes in web-accessed DBs.
610 Billion messages per year = TB
Internet Traffic is doubling every 100 days - An estimated 62 Million Americans now use the internet Radio took 38 years to get 50 M listeners, TV took 13 years, the Net took 4 years...

16. Internet Hosts:

17. Projected Voice and Data Traffic

18. Language Distribution of Web Content

19. Language Distribution on a 634 Million Web Pages Corpus

20. Human Memory Landauer 86: Human brain holds 200MB
looked at rate of information intake and rate of forgetting, and amount of information adults need for normal tasks
6B people on earth implies total memory of all people alive about 1,200 petabytes
Another way:
estimate that people take in a byte/sec
lifetime 250,000 days or 2B sec
result is 2 GB (doesn’t count synthesizing new info)

21. Data and Information
These two terms are quite often used interchangeably
used without any definitions or explanation
There are no standard definitions for these two terms
Two possible definitions:

22. Data and Information (cont.)
items such as text, facts, numbers, images or sounds that may or may not be useful for a particular purpose
Information
data which has been processed so that its form and content are appropriate for a particular purpose

23. Intuitive Notion Information must
Be something, although the exact nature (substance, energy, or abstract concept) is not clear;
Be “new”: repetition of previously received messages is not informative
Be “true”: false or counterfactual information is “mis-information”
Be “about” something
This human-centered approach emphasizes meaning and use of message

24. Knowledge
Quite often the terms information and knowledge are used interchangeably
One possible definition of knowledge
a combination of information, instincts, rules, ideas, procedures and experience that guide actions and decisions

25. Knowledge (cont.) Two types of knowledge Tacit
also called implicit, private or personal knowledge
knowledge held by an individual; may not have been articulated or may not be articulatable
For example, how does Michael Jordan accomplish his “slam dunks”

26. Knowledge (cont.) Explicit also called public or social knowledge
expressed in a form that makes it available to others
usually in a written form, but may be in other forms such as verbal

27. Continuum
Quite often data, information and knowledge are expressed as a continuum:
Data => Information => Knowledge

28. Pyramid Data, information and knowledge are also depicted as a pyramid
a distillation occurs as we move up the pyramid
data is “raw material”
as data is processed, information is distilled from it and the resulting amount is smaller in size; the same result is experienced in going from information to knowledge

30. Wisdom Long term goal should be the acquisition of wisdom
but there is not much discussion in the literature or in the media
The current situation was aptly described by T.S. Eliot:
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

31. Wisdom (cont.)
Wisdom connotes the ability to acquire and use knowledge and information judiciously, possessing the power of judging rightly and following the soundest course of action based on knowledge, skill, experience and understanding.

32. Information Hierarchy
Data
The raw material of information
Information
Data organized and presented by someone
Knowledge
Information read, heard or seen and understood
Wisdom
Distilled and integrated knowledge and understanding

33. What is Data?
Represented by shapes or symbols that require cognitive skill to decipher
May not provide a context to fully understand its meaning
e.g.
10,000,000
5,000,000

34. What is Information? e.g. Joe won
Involves process of reception, recognition and conversion
May involve a ‘novelty’ factor--a new piece of data
May have multiple interpretations resulting in ‘public’ and ‘private’ information
e.g.
Joe won
$10,000,000 in the lottery last year and $5,000,000 more this year.

35. What is Knowledge?
Is created/acquired from a collection of information
Knowledge builds on a foundation of accurate information and can be passed on to others
e.g.
Joe has been paying a lot of taxes because of his lottery winnings and the brand new mansion he bought.

36. What is Wisdom/Insight?
Represents highest level of complexity in chain of concepts
Difficult to impart via a storage medium
Argued to exist only within an individual
e.g.
He who has money has friends.

37. Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-- T.S. Eliot, “The Rock”
Where is the information we have lost in data?

38. Whom Do People Ask for Information?
People immediately present
People they know
People they trust
“Gatekeepers”
People in authority generally
People with cognitive authority
Teachers
Librarians

39. How Do People Ask for Information?
At the moment of need
By the easiest available route
By what they expect will give them the most suitable answer
By what they expect will give them the most accessible answer

40. Information and People
Information reinforces social bonds
People exchange familiar information
People continue to believe erroneous information
People say they value information (more than they use it)
People want a known available source

41. Limits to Information
People do not want information that will upset them
People do not want information that might upset them
People do not want more information than they can store
People do not want more information than they can process
People must eventually stop getting information and act on what they know

42. Dangers of Information
Information might be erroneous
Information might be deliberately misleading
Information might be contradictory
Information might be so excessive as to paralyze action
Information may cost more than its worth
Relying on authority may be better than information
Possessing information may make one a too conspicuous social figure
Possessing information may make one a challenge to authority

43. Storing Information
People do not want more information than they can store
Immediate storage:
Short and long term memory
Active knowledge
People need more information than they can store immediately:
“At hand”
“In the library”
“On the web”

44. Information Wants and Needs
What people truly need
What people recognize they need
What people are willing to admit they need
What people truly want now
What people think they want now
What people say they want now

45. The Standard Retrieval Interaction Model

46. Standard Model Assumptions
Maximizing precision and recall simultaneously
The information need remains static
The value is the resulting document set

47. Problems with Standard Model
Users learn during the search process
Scanning titles of retrieved documents
Reading retrieved documents
Viewing lists of related topics
Navigating hyperlinks
Some users don’t like long disorganized lists of documents

48. Berry-Picking as an Information Seeking Strategy
Standard IR model
Assumes the information need remains the same throughout the search process
Berry-picking model
Interesting information is scattered like berries among bushes
The query is continually shifting

49. Berry-Picking Model (cont.)
The query is continually shifting
New information may yield new ideas and new directions
The information need
Is not satisfied by a single, final retrieved set
Is satisfied by a series of selections and bits of information found along the way

51. Systems View (cont.)
Data enters the system and are converted into information through a process of formatting, filtering and summarizing.
knowledge is used to determine how to format, filter and summarize data
Guided by knowledge, the resulting information is interpreted
this leads to decisions and actions

52. Systems View (cont.) The actions generate results.
Comparison of actions and results helps accumulate new knowledge
this improves the process of interpreting information, making decisions and taking new actions.

53. The information search process
the user’s constructive activity of finding meaning from information in order to extend his or her state of knowledge
the process of sense-making within a personal frame of reference

54. The user and information-seeking behavior
There is a long history of studying human behavior in seeking and using information
Systems-oriented studies and information-as-object-oriented systems
User-oriented studies and user-oriented systems

55. Systems orientation Information is viewed as:
an external objective entity
having a content-based reality
existing independently of users or social systems.

56. User-centered Information is viewed as: User orientation
a subjective construction
that is created internally in the minds of the users
User orientation
Users, looking for information to aid problem solving and decision-making, have inadequacies in their state of knowledge - gaps or uncertainties
sometimes they know what they need to find out; sometimes they don’t

57. User-centered (cont.) User model
Information systems should be designed to assist users in discovering and representing their knowledge of a problem situation
User model
A general user model of information seeking behavior must encompass both the user and his context, i,e., the information behavior of the user and the environment in which this behavior occurs.

58. Information Behavior Information needs Information seeking
Information use

59. Dervin’s Sense-Making Model
Dervin’s sense-making model focuses on the user’s cognitive needs
the user moves through space and time
making sense of his/her actions, the environment and the information system’s inputs
As long as everything is meaningful, movement ahead is possible.

60. Dervin’s Sense-Making Model
But, movement ahead may be blocked by stops or cognitive gaps
And user must define the nature of the gap or the cause of the stop
Based on user’s assessment, he selects tactics and information to bridge the gap.

61. Kuhlthau’s model
Distinguished stages in the information search and use process -each stage characterized by the user’s behavior in three realms of experience
the affective (feelings)
the cognitive (thought)
the physical (action)

62. Kuhlthau’s model (cont.)
Six stages of the information search process:
initiation
selection
exploration
formulation
collection
presentation

63. Communication between the user and the information retrieval system
each has its own language (concepts vs. symbols)
user must “translate” his information need into one the information system will understand OR
the information system must interpret the information need of the user and translate the user’s request into one that the system can process

64. How is this communication accomplished?
Different ways of searching
controlled vocabulary
natural language

65. Information ecology User behavior and user environments
part of what Davenport calls the “information ecology” of an organization
internal environments and
external environments

66. Information ecology (Davenport)
Davenport views an information ecology as encompassing six components:
Information strategy
Information politics
Information behavior and culture
Information staff
Information processes (use)
Information architecture

67. Information Systems
An information system is a combination of work practices, information, people, and information technology organized to accomplish goals in an organization
goals are actually outside the information system

68. Forms of Information Systems
database systems
information storage and retrieval systems
transaction processing systems
management information systems
decision support systems
knowledge management systems

69. Components of information systems
Work practices
Information
People
Information technology

70. Information Life Cycle
A useful way to envision information is in terms of its life cycle
the life cycle identifies the phases through which information passes from creation to final disposition
Life cycle phases
Creating (Authoring)
Distribution (Networking)

71. Information Life Cycle (cont.)
Life cycle phases (cont.)
Use
Organizing/Indexing
Storing/Retrieving
Accessing/Retrieving
Reusing/Modifying
Disposition