Prekop 2002 a Qualitative Study of Collaborative Information Seeking

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he current issue and

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qualitative

study

of

collaborative

information

seeking

aul

Prekop

Information Technology Division, Defence Science & Technology

Organisation, Department

of

Defence, Canberra, Australia

Keywords

Information systems, Information retrieval, Information technology

bstract

Much

of

the existing information seeking literature only considers information

seeking when performed by an individual information seeker. This paper describes a study that

explicitly considers information seeking from a collaborative perspective. The s tudy used a

grounded theory approach

of

a complex, real world, example

of

collaborative information seeking

activity, drawn from the military domain.

Introduction

Information seeking forms an important part of many human actIvltIes,

ranging from decision-making and problem solving through to resource

allocation and system management (Rouse and Rouse,

1984).

While many

different models of information seeking have been proposed (Brown, 1991),

implicit in most of them is the assumption that the information seeker is an

individual. Recently, researchers have begun to challenge this assumption, and

to explore the collaborative dimensions of information seeking. Studies of

collaborative information seeking, within various contexts (McDonald and

Ackerman, 1998; Koschmann and Stahl, 1998; Twidale and Nichols, 1998)

have begun to emerge, and within the computer supported collaborative

work

(CSCW)

domain, experimental technology

to

support collaborative

information seeking activities have been developed (Cohen

et al.,

1998; Romano

et al., 1999 .

This paper presents details

of

a qualitative study of the collaborative

dimensions of information seeking. The study describes the collaborative

information seeking behaviours performed by a working group created to

perform the cornmand and control support

(C2S)

study. The

C2S

study was a

large and complex review of the Australian Defence Force's

(ADF)

cornmand

and control capability, and was conducted over three years. The C2S study

working group performed all the information collection and analysis that made

up the C2S study. This paper codifies the collaborative information seeking

behaviours of the

C2S

working group as they collected the information needed

for the

C2S

study.

Collaborative

information

seeking

Received 4 October 2001

Revised 15 April 2002

Accepted 6 May 2002

Joumal of Documentation,

he

author wishes to thank Dr Leoni Warne for her invaJuable help and guidance.

Vol.

58

No. 5, 2002

, pp .

533·547.

©

Cornmonwealth of Australia.

MCB

UP Limited,

0022·0418

533

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ata collection and

analysis

Two types of data were collected from the working group, the minutes

of

the

working group s meetings, and semi-structured interviews with a sample

of

working group participants.

There were 40 working group meetings each lasting an average of just over

two hours. The meetings had a formal structure with n agenda circulated

before each meeting, and formal actions assigned to meeting participants. One

person recorded the majority 82.5 per cent) of the minutes; a second participant

recorded

12.5

per cent of the meetings, with the remaining two meetings, 5 per

cent, being recorded by two other, different participants.

A total of

28

active[l] participants were involved in the C2S study, with an

average

of

nine participants involved at any time. Due to posting cycles, and

the general movement of staff within the ADF, membership of the working

group went through three major changes during the C2S study s lifetime. Out

of the eight participants who were involved in the C2S study during its final

stages, five were selected for interview. Of the five, two were DSTO

representatives (referred

to

as DST01 and DST02) who had been involved in

the working group since the start, the remaining three were ADF

representatives (referred to as ADF1, ADF2 and ADF3) who had been involved

in the working group for

t

least one year. The ADF participants also

represented a good cross-section of the different ADF representatives who

participated in the C2S study. The five participants were interviewed using

structured interviews

K

vale, 1996). The interviews were recorded and

transcribed. Each interview lasted for an average

40

minutes.

To capture the richness of information seeking behaviours, a qualitative

research approach (Kaplan and Duchon, 1988) based on grounded theory

(Glaser and Strauss, 1967) was used to guide data collection and analysis.

Grounded theory has been successfully applied to previous work in

information seeking for example Ellis, 1989).

Initially, the meeting minutes were open coded as suggested by Glaser and

Strauss

1967).

Candidate categories and their properties were identified. As the

analysis progressed, similar categories were merged, and the properties of the

remaining categories expanded. The initial collection of 13 categories tended to

describe the responsibilities of the individual participants and the roles they

tended to adopt (later to be described as the roles), and repeating interactions

that occurred in the meetings (later to be described as pattems). These initial

collections of categories were used as the starting point for the second stage of

data collection and analysis.

During the second stage, the first round of interviews was undertaken . The

interviews were used to add depth to the initial set of categories. Participants

were asked about their information seeking behaviours during their

participation in the C2S study. These descriptions were compared with the

behaviours and pattems uncovered in the meeting minutes. The two sets

of

codes were combined; with the interview data adding several new codes, as


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well

as adding

a deeper explanation to

many

of the codes uncovered in the

minutes data.

n initial attempt to identify the relationships grounded theory describes

this

as

axial coding Glaser and Strauss, 1967)) between the different categories

was attempted

during

this stage. As attempts to identify the relationships

between the codes were undertaken, the role of context in understanding the

relationship between the working group participants, their roles, and their

information seeking

patterns

emerged. Out of the

data

already collected

an

initial set of contexts was identified.

The three groups, the roles,

patterns and

context, were used as the

starting

point for the third and final

stage

of analysis. During this final stage the

last

interviews were conducted.

The

goal of these interviews

was

to

add

depth to

the previously identified roles, patterns

and

contexts to see if they faithfully

described the information seeking behaviour of the working group

participants. As with the previous round of interviews, this round of interviews

added a deeper explanation to

many

of the codes already uncovered,

as

well

as

uncovering an additional role, that had

not

been identified previously. During

this stage, the overarching relationships between the three

groups

of categories

were also identified grounded theory describes this as selective coding Glaser

and Strauss, 1967)), and the key perspective of the description identified

grounded theory describes this as the analytical

story

Glaser and Strauss,

1967)).

Collaborative

infonnation seeking

The

analysis of the C2S

study

working group identified three components

as

being important to the collaborative information seeking activity, information

seeking roles, information seeking patterns,

and

the contexts in which the roles

and

patterns

are performed. The relationship between the three components is

shown

in Figure l

Context describes the collection of events, histories, culture, knowledge and

understanding, which exist together at a point in time Dervin, 1996;

Sonnenwald, 1999).

For

the

C2S study

working group, two contexts were

identified: the collaborative information seeking context shown in the top of

the figure)

and

the organisational context shown in the bottom of the figure).

The two contexts

are

described in more detail later.

As well as context, information seeking roles also emerged as being

important to the collaborative information seeking activity. Roles describe the

behaviours

and

the responsibilities of the participants within the working

group poole, 1992). Roles were

both

formally assigned

and

informally adopted

through explicit and tacit negotiation Shaw, 1981). Participants also enacted

multiple roles, and several participants enacted the

same

role. The seven roles

are

shown

in the top half of Figure 1 The roles are described in more detail

later.

The final component identified within the

C2S

study group was the

information seeking patterns. In this case, the patterns describe prototypical

Collaborative

information

seeking

535


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lDO

58 5

lofo Seeking

lnstigator

Info indexer/

lnfo Verifier

Abstractor

5 6

igure 1

Model of collaborative

infonnation seeking

lnfo Gatherer

Organisatiooal

Group

Administrator

Context

actions, interactions and behaviours perronned by participants adopting any of

the various roles. The patterns are described in more detaillater.

ontext and participants

Two important contexts were identified within the gathered data. Each context

captures a specific collection of events, histories, culture, knowledge and

understanding that exists together, for a point

in

time (Dervin,

1996;

Sonnenwald, 1999), and influences the behaviour

of

the working group

participants.

The first context identified was the collaborative infonnation seeking

context, which captures what

is

collectively known, understood, felt and

believed, as well as the history of the working group, and the group s nonns,

social rules and social structures (Hartley,

1997; Wood et al 1992). These

properties affected all the activities that were perronned within the working

group.

t

is within this context that the collaborative infonnation seeking

activity tool place, and where the participants enacted the various collaborative

infonnation seeking roles.

The second context, the organisational context, describes where each

participant perronning within the collaborative infonnation seeking activity

is

drawn from. The concept of an organisational context

is

used to describe a

unique organisation for example, the Anny, or project procurement, and so on)

that contains specialist information and knowledge. Each organisation tends to

have its own important issues, perspective, knowledge, and other important

factors, that influence members of that organisation. Two important elements

of the organisational context emerged as being important

to

collaborative


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information seeking, the participant s organisational perspective, and their

organisational gateway.

As participants enact the various roles they bring with them an

organisational perspective, as a result of the organisational context they are

drawn from. The following extract from ADF3 captures this:

They [the participants] obviously wear the hat of the organisation they re coming from so,

whether you like the individual or not there s a hat of whether you like them or not or

whether you can relate to them. There s the hat of what do they contribute to the

intellectual debate around the working group and there s the hat they wear in an

organisational sense where you may not like them, and may not think they re very good but

actually they re the person that you need to have the conduit through to the organisation

ADF3).

Many of the participants interviewed were very conscious of their

organisational perspectives, and how these influenced the way they enacted

their roles. ADFl, for example, was not only very conscious of the perspective

he brought to the collaborative information seeking activity, but was also very

conscious of the perspective brought by other participants. This is reiterated by

ADF3, who was not only deliberate

in

the perspective he used, but also aware

of the perspective other participants brought, and the influence these

perspectives had in shaping the final out

come

DSTOl echoed this view and

described the different organisational perspectives the participants had as

being useful in knowing which participant would be likely to answer specific

questions, or have access to specific information.

Participants also bring with them an organisational gateway back into their

organisational context. An organisational gateway is a conduit from the

collaborative information seeking context into the organisational context the

participant is drawn from. The two-way nature of the gateway means that

participants not only represent their organisational context within the

collaborative information seeking context, but also represent the collaborative

information seeking context back to their organisational context. The following

extract from DST02 illustrates this

well:

Early on we relied almost entirely on them [the participants] being our eyes and ears into the

environments [organisations] we were looking

t

(DST02).

The organisational gateway acts as a way of accessing both formal and

informal information within the organisational context. In general, the

information needed by the working group tended to flow from the

collaborative information seeking context through a participant s

organisational gateway into the organisational context the participant is

drawn from. This tended

to

trigger the referral

of

unsolicited information from

the organisational context into the collaborative information seeking context.

As

wiU

be shown later, when discussing the various roles, understanding of a

participant s organisational gateway was also important

in

assigning the

various roles.

Collaborative

information

seeking

5 7


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lDOC

58 5

5 8

Collaborative information seeking roles

Roles describe behaviours and actions participants perform and the

responsibilities they have (Shaw, 1981). In many ways, roles are analogous to

the information seeking behaviours developed by Ellis 1989) and the

informabon seeking personalties developed by Palmer

1991)

and Bonner t al

1998).

Information gatherer

The main task of the information gatherer was to find

and gather specific information. This role is well described by the existing

literature on individual information seeking for example Kuhlthau, 1991;

Westbrook, 1993; Vickery and Vickery, 1987). When performed within a

collaborative information seeking activity, several interesting questions

emerged.

The first was how and why participants adopted, or were assigned the

information gatherer role. The voluntary adoption of an informabon gatherer

role tended to depend on how closely the participant felt the information that

needed to be gathered matched the information available to them vía their

organisational gateway and perspective.

As well as voluntarily adopting information seeking roles, information

seeking instigators

a

role responsible for assigning the information gatherer

role

to

a working group participant) would also assign information seeking

roles to specific participants. Deciding which participant to assign to an

information seeking role was generally based on an understanding of the

participant s organisational perspective and gateway. This understanding was

built up over time trom explicit advertisements made by the participants, or as

a result of the previous roles they had enacted. This pattern of advertising

information availability is described in more detaillater.

The information gatherer role existed within the collaborative information

seeking context, while the actual information gathering took place wíthin the

participant s organisational context. An interesting effect occurred when the

participant enacting the informabon gatherer role moved back into their

organisational context to actually gather the needed informabon. They would

often pass the ínformation request to a subordinate or expert information

seeker within their organisabonal context. In extreme cases, the informabon

request would pass through several people in this way. While the

information request was passed, the collaborative information seeking context

that exísted when the information request was developed was seldom passed.

As a result, the subordinate or expert information seeker actually gathering the

information was often gathering t without a complete understanding of the

context that created the information need. DST01 describes this as a type of

Chinese whispers, which often returned information that was not very useful or

relevant.

Information referrer The main task of the information referrer was to direct

unsolicited information from the participant s organisational context into the

collaborative information seeking context. The following extract trom ADF2

describes his actions as

he

acted in the role of an information referrer:


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60 e-mails in a

send it

to

me, but

chuck something out in the filter than not

..

I'd

nm

a bit of a filter over it and if it was useful, 1 would send it. In the back of

At,,,,,1 ,,,,1

Collaborative

most of the groups were 1 think

information

or you sort of had that awareness

Most of it [ínfonnation was I'd be

and they'd suddenly say oh must send you that document or I've

DSTOl

the descríbed

participants acting as informabon

rAt ,A ' ,Arc

would her

to working meetings, informabon

or

purposeful their advertisement of

potential information as the

when away from work. 1 tend to try and

, - UH,na ' ,

information sources. I'm trying

to

let people know what I'm

-0I ' t1l ' 1 want to be so they can do a bit of self before

that most oí the has to be at my end, but ít's easier

to

t

in the first instance

ADF3).

all were as expEdt and purposeful as

In

advertisement

information ínterests and For for

information and

primarBy on personal

almost

describes activity as a social

interactions with organisational members.

nformation The task of information verifier was

all 'ual. \ . .

the Verification gathered information is

an

implicit individual information see for

Kuh1thau, Westbrook,

1993).

within information

activity

regardless

in verification was an and

part of collaborative informabon with all the information

the source, Verification to

on two key areas.

The was

gathered. following

the accuracy and

\ - ,c, , -n. 'H5' Checking that it was valid, that 1 got, that 1 wasn 't happy with,

~ ' ' ' , h a doing more digging when was insufficient stuff And then

5 9


8/16

l Qe

58,5

540

had to it all together and send

it

back , . , If it

readable, so on], but not always " it didn't ,. to say if

contentious d

try

and check it from someone else (DST02).

and

was

and utility.

information relates ~ ~ ~ J ~ ~ J 1983)

the initial information

is illustrated

ADF3:

. , . bringing

in

our wealth of to tease out some 1 mean 1 was delíberately

controversial

at

times. I'd throwa pebble in the water you

Iíke

and argue about

something and turn around and argue back the other way beca use 1 fe1t that

we

couldn't just agree on

at

face value. We needed to it and tease it and

sort

it

around a líttle bit

1cn--:>rC'

the the

gateway when performing the information

similar approach to ínformation verification is descríbed

ADF2, sees only the accuracy quality the information as being

important, but also how it can and how useful and

it to work undertaken.

Injormation

The main

the information

COO ' T 1 r 1

instigator was to direct participants to specific information. The

from DST01 the

of

the information " 'c . a ln

.....

. . . I'd initiate the information

U v v ~ u u ó

and monitor it

in

terms will we actually get the

documents we seek and

if

we didn't them then I'd seek them other Or

stepping in myse1f if someone hadn't to hold of a document (DSTOl).

the aboye the information

, , , , , , n .L U L A

in place somedentifying the initial information need, then

activity to that need. Once the . seeking

the informabon instigator monitors

if As previously, the

information need is perfonned by

an information need movmg

well by existing

sense-making model .

r l ,f f . :>r .on f individual

UH

.•

U

.......'"

,n r .rrn-:>t· ,r .n seeking seems

collaborative p f ( ) C e S S E ~ information need

(mostly seen withín methods used to the

information

Within the collaborative information seeKm,g

were ofien by an

, n T I , r T T l ~

information

http:///reader/full/ff.:%3Er.onhttp:///reader/full/ff.:%3Er.on


9/16

shared

work. All infonnation instigators found that they built

with particular participants

past

different levels

activity

information u ·

, -' .f>'-'Á

for

as pointers within

advertisements, infonnation seeking

of infonnation an infonnation

¡ ; ; ' U . L U ' -Á

previous roles.

v , u u ~ Á ~ o f w h a t l n l l o m l a t l o n

advertise particular of

infonnation. infonnation instigator used advertisements to

participants to gather needed infonnation (by enacting

infonnation gatherer role). DST01 describes the

explicit of what infonnation participants were to .,."'rn",,.,.·

Well a lot of it was talked about during the working

gT Up

And so

in

group everyone can talk about

who

would be the most

to

go and

And 1 was quite

in

those

how

people

knew that were the

persono

But that have been purely due

to

theír in the but it my and 1 11 find that out while some of them

who

were around the table knew that they had access

to

that documentation

(DSTOl).

build

can access from

infonnation seeking

as the \ ' L ' ~ 7 1 . ,

infonnation can access.

Infonnation seeking n

as a guide quality of the infonnation

role as a result

who she

participants. view is echoed by

Injormation indexer/abstracter

collaborative infonnation

infonnation indexerlabstracter.

like a librarían or

by providing well

organisational summaries and pointers were used the

infonnation infonnation gatherers to gather actually

needed infonnation. Various fonns of role have been within

the Ehrlich and Cash 1994) identified a within

study customer support agents, McDonald and Ackennan 1998)

ít IT

1996)

it a

, U J ' U H . U

organisation.

The following

infonnation index/

as

group:

The way

to

find out was the members

of

the working group or through other

contacts that we

had

t

previous operations. 1 knew a from [previous work] because

we

knew that were doing this because

we

had sat

n

watched them, so

we

said

to

them

information on this, and would say

«Oh

such and such is that" or

this

t

the moment or he ís the new , so there was that and

the we didn't know or we didn't know how to we had to rely on the

environmental representative like the Navy guy who would know and then

he

would have

to

Collaborative

infonnation

54


10/16

know who knew it. he didn t know he would have to go and find out who knew and then he

lDO

us the name and then we would pay these visits. And then . so it was

58,5

the person to person contact (DST02).

would

The

tent::tea to

informabon indexer/abstracter role

advertisements were generally

group. AIso, as the trom

likely to be to enact an information

H J . U ' v A \ . . J . f

the

participants

be

recommended to the information and ínformation U L U ' F ' >

as a of an information activity. Informabon gatner ers

information instigators al so to up an understanding of

which participants are likely be able an information indexer/

organisational context, based on pastbstracter for a particular

with

Group

administrator

role was not involved in the

actual informabon but was responsible

support to group, and was

organising information that resulted trom information

(similar in many ways to Kuhlthau s (1991) presentation stage, or Westbrook s

(1993) closing of formal and

parts extract

tro

the rac ' r , ,n

The other role that was almost like information tallying. She was very

had this set up where al the minutes were kept.

So

that was

to do that in would have been hard. Then we could find

and she catalogued,

a lot of stuff (DST02).

• cataloguing the

•

•

the group administrator

information seeking acbvities;

keeping minutes of

scheduling

UJ.\..\.-uu¡.;,::>,

• distributing collected ínformation.

Group manager As with the group administrator the group role

was not directly involved the collaborative

activity. The


11/16

key focus for this role was managing the

C S

study working group. The

following extract from DST01 illustrates the group manager role:

My

main motivation in terms of the working group was to keep it working. To keep people

attending. o keep them working with the team, to keep them well informed. o get them

to

become part of the analysis process, to feel as though they owned the analysis (DSTOl).

As the aboye quote illustrates, a large part of the group manager role inc1uded

most of the expected group management functions, inc1uding sertling conflicts

between group participants, resolving ambiguities, guiding the overall

direction of the work of the group, monitoring the progress of the work, and so

on (DST02, DST01). A similar view was echoed by DST02 who described the

group manager role as being responsible for ensuring the group s work

maintained its momentum, as well as ensuring disputes and problems were

resolved.

Information seeking patterns

The third component of the collaborative information seeking activity within

the

C S

study was the partems of interactions between the roles within the

contexts. Partems describe prototypical actions, interactions and behaviours

performed by participants adopting any one of the roles. Partems were

identified late in the analysis of the data, and the data already collected did not

facilitate the identification of all the parterns that may have existed within the

working group. Only three partems are described in this paper. Future research

will focus on identifying additional partems important to collaborative

information seeking.

Information seeking

by

recommendation The information seeking by

recornmendation pattem is tightly tied to the information referrer role. The

main elements of this partern are:

(1) Advertising in terest

The information seeking instigator advertises an

interest in particular information.

(2) Recommendation

Using the advertisement as a guide, the information

referrer forwards unsolicited information, or references

to

information to

the information seeking instigator.

(3) Tasking information seeking

The information seeking instigator may

task an information gatherer.

The partem begins with the advertisement of the information seeking

instigator s information needs. The advertisement may take the form of a

formal presentation of information needs, or more cornmonly, through informal

discussions between the information seeking instigator and potential

information referrers.

Using the advertisement as a guide, information referrers

forward information

to

the information seeking instigator they

feel

satisfies the

instigator s information need.

n

important characteristic of this partem is that it is not deliberate,

but opportunistic. The information referrer does not deliberately seek out

Collaborative

information

seeking

54


12/16

lDOC

58,5

satisfy the information

relevant'

specifically

0 1 1-1-.,,,1

they will

relevant information.

An interesting,

optíonal final of

deliberately

an

point

information . and

advertisernent

ó+ó ó

would forward her

information based on their and their

the and objectives

ro ..,0" this,

and notes that once she advertised her

,nto .o tc-

to an

individual or a group found she often of

information referral network.

Direct questioning This information seeking

of all the identified,

seeKmg driven by the inforrnatíon seeking

pattern are:

ínstigator a e ( : l Q { ~ on

1) Instigator questions The

(2)

Questions formalised Information

lal1.",-"um

sorne way.

Questions

to

participants

and organisational n.:>,·"n,OI"""

based on

their organisational

(4)

Informatíon is found by partícipants their

the inforrnation.

Informatíon returned

to

instígator or agent The

the information back to the instigator.

with

information needs.

organísational

1 \ ' , , , 1

a relevant

next information

,-,.,,,,ya,., information 1S returned to the information

of individual

to the .

gathered m IOrnr1atlOn elal. ).Ll\.-' information need,

activity stops. f the information

"'",'·

ara, . . . not

needs, activity through p ~ , ' p r ~


13/16

Advertising information paths pattern is so much about

SeeKln,g

Collaborative

information as it

is

about providing paths by which to

information

information. mam of this are:

seeking

1) Participants advemse their organisational perspective and gateway

Participants their ability to information on a specific

topie.

2) Information gatherer or information indexerlabstracter tasked

participant is used irnmediately or sorne time as an 1 n , , ~

or information indexer/abstracter.

As in the the begins participants

what information resources they can access vía theír organisational gateway.

Information instigators use the to identify

- n N - >

participants fulfil an information specific

information. use of a to as a

tISl:: m,ent may irnmediate, or more likely occur sorne

initial advertisement is made.

directions

begun to as an

the rnt,ornaatlOn cornmunity,

supported collaborative cornmunity

to be able

to

support collaborative information

technology, a understanding of collaborative

real world collaborative

collaborative

ídentified

the

To

5 5


14/16

JDQC

date, only one example of collaboratíve ínformatíon

C an r , . n -

so the descriptions in this cannot yet

the of collaborative information seeking

that must

objectives.

Future work needs

descriptive model

of

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Documents

Prekop 2002 a Qualitative Study of Collaborative Information Seeking