INFO 310 - April 8, 2004 - Basic Concepts in HIB
Notes By: Egaas, Fortier, Prins

Seminal: The benchmark in a field. Point at which it promotes a different way of thinking and it moves the field in a new direction.

Basic Concepts in HIB
- Acquiring new lenses to see HIB and a new language to analyze it.

Information Need - Definition
    > Information needs arise whenever individuals find themselves in a situation, and require information to deal with the situation as they see fit.
    > The Difference between:
        * Information Want
            - The information a person thinks she or he wants to have solve an information problem
                -OR-
            - The information a person believes will solve his or her information problem
        * Information Demand
            - The information a person believes he or she can ask for
            ? Why should not one ask for what one wants?
                - One may not know what one wants
                - One may want to ask for what one think one can get
                - One feels uncomfortable
        * Information Need
            - The information that will solve the person's information problem
            ? How do we if something is a true information need?
                - After the fact
                - Have a "scientific" way to determine

Stages of Need Development (Taylor)
    > Visceral: A sense of uneasiness
    > Conscious: Ill-defined area of indecision 
    > Formalized: Describes area in concrete terms, making the need as explicit as possible 
    > Compromised: Need as translated into the system’Äôs language

Stages of Need Development Exercise
    > Please identify the stage of the information need in each of the following quotations on the handout. 
    1) Conscious or Visceral
    2) Conscious
    3) Compromised
    4) Formalized
    5) Formalized and/or Compromised
    6) Visceral
    7) Compromised
    8) Compromised
    9) Conscious
    10) Visceral

Types of Information Needs
    > By Nature of Expected Answer:
        - Known item need: The answer that is required is a certain, known item
        - Subject need: The answer that is required is information on a particular subject, or of a particular kind
    > By the Generator of the Need:
        - Self need: A need generated by the person who is looking for answers
        - Proxy need: A need generated by another person (imposed need)

Information Behavior
    > Information Seeking
        - How an individual goes about obtaining information.
    > Information Evaluating
        - How users decide if the information they obtained is relevant to their need, that is if it can resolve their need.
    > Information Use
        - The outcome of information seeking.
    > Information Representing
        - Creating surrogates to represent information.
    > Information Giving
        - The act of disseminating messages
        
Information Seeking
    > How an individual goes about obtaining information. 
    
    > Types by level of purpose: 
        - Searching
            * Purposely looking for information to resolve a particular information need. 
        - Surfing
            * Browsing through a source of information, just to see what it has, without a particular information need. 
        - Encountering
            * ’ÄúBumping’Äù into information that can resolve a particular information need when doing other things. 


Searching Strategies
    > Where are we now?
    > Information behavior
        - Information seeking
            < Searching
                * Search Strategies
                    The five search strategies:
                        - The browsing strategy
                            * Intuitive scanning following leads by 
                            association _without much planning_ ahead.
                        - The analytical strategy 
                            * _Explicit consideration_ of attributes 
                            of the information need and of the search system.
                        - The empirical strategy
                            * Based on previous experience, using rules 
                            and tactics that were successful in the past.
                        - The known site strategy
                            * Going directly to the place where the 
                            information is located.
                        - The similarity strategy
                            * Find information based on a previous successful 
                            example that is similar to the current need.     

Assignment:
    - Select final group for the user project and sign up for class presentation date.
    - Read Ellis.







OT:
maybe we should make a notes wiki? wtf is a wiki    
    http://www.wikipedia.com is the biggest one
    but the best use for us would be you could make a class page, then list the notes, then when you add it, we could format it correctly in plaintext in SEE, then bring it into the wiki and it'll all be formatted coollike
    A wiki is a website, where anyone can go to it, and change anything in the pages of the site, great collaboration tool, you link shit to other pages in the wiki by just writing the pages name, like TestPage or ThisIsAWikiPage (note the camel case)
    Yeah, I set one of these up and it was kind of a pain.
    fine no wiki
    I just don't understand how to make it work for me, so I am just like... bleh.
    I had one for a long time, it worked pretty well