Abstract :
Context is one of the most important concepts in information
seeking and retrieval research. However, the
challenges of studying context are great; thus, it is more
common for researchers to use context as a post hoc
explanatory factor, rather than as a concept that drives
inquiry. The purposes of this study were to develop a
method for collecting data about information seeking
context in natural online environments, and identify
which aspects of context should be considered when
studying online information seeking. The study is
reported in two parts. In this, the first part, the background
and method are presented. Results and implications
of this research are presented in Part 2 (Kelly,
in press). Part 1 discusses previous literature on
information seeking context and behavior and situates
the current work within this literature. This part further
describes the naturalistic, longitudinal research design
that was used to examine and measure the online
information seeking contexts of users during a 14-week
period. In this design, information seeking context was
characterized by a user’s self-identified tasks and topics,
and several attributes of these, such as the length of
time the user expected to work on a task and the user’s
familiarity with a topic. At weekly intervals, users evaluated
the usefulness of the documents that they viewed,
and classified these documents according to their tasks
and topics. At the end of the study, users provided feedback
about the study method.
