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Collaborative Information Seeking: From ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’ to ‘How?’ and ‘So What?’

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Collaborative Information Seeking

Part of the book series: Computer Supported Cooperative Work ((CSCW))

Abstract

Working in collaboration is one of the fundamental behaviors of human kind. We do so for various reasons – solving complex problems, learning a skill, and even for simply propagating social connections. It is this behavior that has not only made many of the human achievements possible, but the very survival of the human race feasible. Given that many problems in today’s world require dealing with information, it is no surprise that we find the need to collaborate on complex problems that involve seeking, using, and evaluating information. What are these complex problems? They range from travel planning and health-related information seeking to patent search and preparing legal cases. This chapter describes an interview study done on a small sample to elicit why would anyone collaborate for information seeking, what support they will need, and what does one can gain through collaborative information seeking (CIS). It then attempts to explain this CIS behavior using Shah’s C5 model of collaboration. Finally, the chapter asks and at least partially addresses so what and now what questions. In doing so, the current chapter lays out the groundwork, helping the reader put other chapters in this book in perspective.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.blackboard.com – an instructional support system popular in the US higher education.

  2. 2.

    This was originally proposed by Shah in 2008 and in 2010b, later corrected and elaborated in 2012 and 2014.

  3. 3.

    Available at http://www.empowerment.state.ia.us/files/annual_reports/2001/Collaboration.pdf.

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Acknowledgements

Parts of this work is funded by NSF grant IIS 0812363 and IMLS grant RE-04-12-0105-12.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Communication & Information, Rutgers University, 4 Huntington St, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901, USA

    Chirag Shah

Authors
  1. Chirag Shah
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Correspondence to Chirag Shah .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Stockholm University, Department of Computer and System Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden

    Preben Hansen

  2. Rutgers University, School of Communication & Information, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

    Chirag Shah

  3. GESIS - Leibniz-Institut for Social Sciences, Department of Knowledge Technologies for the Social Sciences, Cologne, Germany

    Claus-Peter Klas

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Shah, C. (2015). Collaborative Information Seeking: From ‘What?’ and ‘Why?’ to ‘How?’ and ‘So What?’. In: Hansen, P., Shah, C., Klas, CP. (eds) Collaborative Information Seeking. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18988-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18988-8_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18541-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18988-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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