Interactive Information Seeking, Behaviour and Retrieval

The concepts of information seeking, information retrieval, and information behaviour are objects of investigation of information science. Information seeking behaviour refers to the way people search for and utilise information. Information seeking is related to, but different from, information retrieval (IR). Information retrieval (IR) is a complex human activity supported by sophisticated systems. Information science has contributed much to the design and evaluation of previous generations of IR system development and to our general understanding of how such systems should be designed and yet, due to the increasing success and diversity of IR systems, many recent textbooks concentrate on IR systems themselves and ignore the human side of searching for information.Ths book is aimed at senior undergraduates and masters level students of all information and library studies courses and practising LIS professionals who need to better appreciate how IR systems are designed, implemented and evaluated. Information seeking behaviour is the micro-level of behaviour employed by the searcher in interacting with information systems of all kinds, be it between the seeker and the system, or the pure method of creating and following up on a search. The digital world is changing human information behaviour and process. Focused almost exclusively on information seeking and using, information receiving, a central modality of the process is generally overlooked. As information seeking continues to migrate to the Internet, and artificial intelligence continues to advance the analysis of user behaviour on the Internet across a range of user interactions, information receiving moves to the heart of the process, as systems "learn" what users like, want and need, as well as their search habits.