Kim Martin, Brian Greenspan, and Anabel Quan-Haase

STAK (Serendipitous Tool for Augmenting Knowledge)

Bridging Gaps between Digital and Physical Resources

“serendipity” mentioned in !all articles!

(JStor) !Total: 6559

“serendipity” mentioned in !LIS articles!

(JStor) !Total: 403

Source: http://dfr.jstor.org/

“With a library it is easier to hope for serendipity than to look for a precise answer.”

–Lemony Snicket

Overview

✤ The beginning!

✤ Serendipity research/models!

✤ User Study!

✤ Augmented Reality tools!

✤ Informed Serendipity!

✤ Theories of distraction!

✤ The prototype

Augmented Reality Storytelling App!

+!

Serendipity Model!

+!

Research on Humanists’ Information Habits!

= !

STAK

From the literature

✤ How will digitization change the research process of humanities scholars? (Weintraub 1980)!!

✤ Majority of searching done online (Toms and O’Brien 2008)!!

✤ Google Scholar most used by scholars (Kemman et al 2013)!!

Research Questions

1. Why is the library the perfect setting for serendipitous discovery and what makes this setting so conducive to the chance encounter?

!! 2. How do researchers actually browse for information in a physical library, and how do they experience libraries and serendipitous discoveries? !! 3. How do we bridge the perceived gap between the physical and digital resources, while at the same time providing users with key features and affordances of both worlds?

User Study

“I find it dizzy because here you know, poor signage. I saw a ‘B’ (referring to call numbers) but I don't know where ‘A’ is. It

would be nice for ‘A’ catalogs are here, ‘B’ here ‘C’ here so I don’t have to go…”

- Maureen

“I feel that if I’m looking up a topic and I go to the shelf for video game studies, I’ll find books that I hadn’t seen in the

catalog, but in the general field; even if I lose track of a single book,I’ll find another in the general area; this happens to me

constantly.”– Clarissa

“typically  I  start  with  the  speci0ic  text  I've  come  across,  sometimes  looking  up  keywords  [kws].  Usually  I  will  0ind  one  book  I  know  i'm  looking  for,  then  check  that  section.  b/c  sometimes  books  don't  come  up  in  my  searches  for  

whatever  reason”  

– David

“I was in the library collecting books as I do, &!one book was in a random section i've never been in before. I was kinda !

surprised that it was not where I expected it to be--one of those ones buried way in a far-flung corner, and if you blink as you walk by you'll miss

it. Trying to find it, I walked past a section & a title caught my eye, so I stopped, & was looking through it, and ended up finding a book that I checked out because it was related to something I was looking for.”

–Bill

12

Is it possible to Design for Serendipity?

STAK will:

✤ Augment the physical collection with the cloud of digital data that surround it!

✤ Preserve the affective experience of physical browsing by allowing for the tactile and embodied experience with research materials. !

✤ Enhance the physical library with the metadata and extant library organization system!

✤ Support users' recall through the spatial experience of information.!

✤ Use the physical library environment to encourage the kinds of distractions and unexpected links that create serendipitous experiences

User ModelResearch interests:!

!Communication analysis of networked academics!

Social Networks!Social media!

Actor-Network Theory!Communication Technologies!

Facebook!Instant messaging!

Latour!Wellman!!

Theories of media reception!Reception theory!

Audience response!Public sphere !Media studies!

Theatre Audience!Censorship!

Bakhtin!Habermas!

!Implementation of Computational Linguistics Lab!

Linguistics applications!AI!

Computer Science!Project management !

Data mining!NLP!

Turing!Markov!!

36-year-old Professor of Communication!

“The title was in bold print, it was a large book, I think that's why I noticed it,

because the book itself was a very vibrant colour. . . .  Often I notice the cover of the book before the title itself, and just take it

from there. That's why it's funny that the 85 Million books like this, the re-covered

bland, grey or black books, those are the ones I have a hard time finding because I

don't notice them right away.”!!!

- Bill!

Research Goal:

To create, not an algorithm for serendipity, but the conditions in which serendipity is likely to occur

Prototyping: STAK

Noticing!!

Capture and Recall!

Noticing

STAK - Book Wanderer Interface Prototype.!(Coded by D. Mould, 2014)

I’m  Feeling  Smart

I’m  Feeling  Lucky

STAK Concept

Future Work

✤ Publish paper on work to date!!✤ Perfect dynamic user model management system!!✤ Design, implement and test several interface prototypes!

References

✤ Kemman, Max, Martijn Kleppe, and Stef Scagliola. 2013. “Just Google It Digital Research Practices of Humanities Scholars.” Cornell Digital Libraries: 1–17.!

✤ Mould, David. 2014. “Book Wanderer” Written in Processing 2.0. July 9, 2014. !

✤ Toms, Elaine G., and Heather L. O’Brien. 2008. “Understanding the Information and Communication Technology Needs of the E-Humanist.” Journal of Documentation 64 (1): 102–130. doi:10.1108/00220410810844178.!

✤ Weintraub, Karl J. 1980. “The Humanistic Scholar and the Library.” The Library Quarterly 50 (1): 22–39.