Group participation in the search process?

How do people search for information in group settings? Many assumptions are made about collaborative search from surveys and laboratory studies. Yet we have little evidence that explains how groups manage the process as our understanding is based on individual search. Using video and logfiles of groups working on complex projects, we extracted 21 episodes in which groups identified a need, searched for information, and found that information or stopped. Within each episode we identified each activity in the search process and classified each by level of participation. Results showed that Individuals did most of the Finding, while the Group/Pairs were involved in identifying gaps (Needing) and extracting information from found objects (Using).