Xie I. Interactive Information Retrieval in Digital Environments

IGI Publishing, 2008, -337 p.The objective of this book is to develop a theoretical framework for information retrieval (IR) interaction and to further discuss its implications in the design and evaluation of IR systems in the digital age. This book builds on the author’s award-winning dissertation titled Planned and Situated Aspects in Interactive IR: Patterns of User Interactive Intentions and Information Seeking Strategies awarded by the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) in 1999. It provides an opportunity for the author to synthesize her 10 years of research and other researchers’ work in this important and unique area.
This book can be divided into four sections. The first provides an overview and foundation for the book. The preface provides the background for the book and answers the question why this book is needed. Chapter I starts with the discussion of the divide between system-oriented and user-oriented approaches, and further presents a variety of user-oriented approaches that are essential for understanding interactive IR.
The second section offers an overview of various IR environments and a comprehensive review of empirical studies of interactive IR in these environments. Chapter II through Chapter V focus on interactive IR in OPAC, online database, Web search engine, and digital library environments. The overview of the IR environment presents history and background of IR systems, definitions and types of the IR systems, current developments on each type of IR systems, and the challenges to users. The review of empirical studies on interactive IR is classified by the key issues derived from empirical studies, including tasks/goals and their impact, levels of information- seeking strategies, users’ knowledge structure, online Help, usability studies, evaluation of interactive IR systems, and so forth. In addition, Chapter VI summarizes the Interactive Track of TREC environment and different types of Interactive Track studies, in particular the contributions and limitations of the Interactive Track. This chapter also discusses relevant works on interactive cross-language information retrieval research mainly in the interactive track of Cross-Language Evaluation Forum (iCLEF).
The third section highlights the development of the interactive IR framework. Chapter VII reviews the macro- and micro-levels of interactive IR models developed in the field, and further discusses the strengths and limitation of these models. Chapter VIII is the heart of the book, in which the author’s interactive IR framework — the planned-situational interactive IR model — is presented. The discussion of the model consists of an overview of the model, a discussion of the levels of user goals and tasks and their representations, relationships between levels of user goals and tasks, dimensions of work and search tasks, users’ personal information infrastructure, the social-organizational context, IR systems, dimensions of information-seeking strategies, shifts in current search goals and information-seeking strategies, and factors affecting those shifts. Chapter IX illustrates and validates the planned-situational interactive IR model by reporting and discussing the results of a pilot of a large-scale study that focuses on the investigation of how people seek and retrieve information in their research proposal writing process.
The fourth section discusses the implications of the interactive IR framework for the design and evaluation of interactive IR systems. Chapter X discusses the theoretical and practical implications of the framework for designing and evaluating interactive IR systems, especially making suggestions for how to support multiple types of information-seeking strategies, how to balance ease-of-use and user control in terms of system role and user involvement, how to create interactive Help mechanisms, and how to develop a multidimensional evaluation framework to evaluate interactive IR systems. Finally, Chapter XI summarizes the contributions of the book, discusses future research directions, and raises questions for further research on interactive IR.
This book is intended for researchers, designers, teachers, graduate and undergraduate students, and professionals who are interested in interactive information retrieval, IR system design, and IR system evaluation in digital environments. The theoretical framework and the comprehensive literature review on theory and practice will provide a foundation for new research on interactive information retrieval and can also serve as part of the curriculum for courses related to information retrieval and IR system design. The discussion of implications will offer guidance for designers and other professionals to design and evaluate new interactive IR systems for the general public as well as for specific user groups.User-Oriented IR Research Approaches Interactive IR in OPAC Environments
Interactive IR in Online Database Environments
Interactive IR in Web Search Engine Environments
Interactive IR in Digital Library Environments
TREC and Interactive Track Environments
Interactive IR Models Interactive IR Framework
Illustration and Validation of the Interactive IR Framework
Implications of the Planned-Situational
Interactive IR Model Conclusions and Future Directions