Social Information Retrieval
Two weeks ago I received an email describing an upcoming workshop about Social Information Retrieval (SRI) – Workshop on Social Information Retrieval in Technology-Enhanced Learning (SIRTEL’07). Accessing the workshop’s web site, I found some topics of interest that are direct related to the comments I wrote in my previous post. According to SIRTEL’s web site:
"Social information retrieval (SIR) refers to a family of techniques that assist users in obtaining information to meet their information needs by harnessing the knowledge or experience of other users. Examples of SIR techniques include sharing of queries, collaborative filtering, social network analysis, social navigation, social bookmarking and the use of subjective relevance judgements such as tags, annotations, ratings and evaluations."
If we consider that users can assist others in a social environment, maybe SIR can help find a way to create information retrieval (IR) systems where users can have a more active role – as producers of information and even knowledge instead of just consumers. Looking for more information about SRI, I found a thesis about this subject. In his work, Sebastian Marius Kirsch describes two techniques for IR in social environments that improve search effectiveness through the incorporation of information about social networks and relationships into the information retrieval process." SIR addresses a new dimension in IR systems – people. According to the author, a SIR system must be characterized by the presence of three entities: documents, queries, and individuals. Therefore, inserting a new dimension affects directly the way we design IR systems, mainly when this dimension (i.e., people) do not have a predictable behavior.
When applied specifically to the Internet, SIR has a different denomination, called Social Search Engine (SSE). Broadly speaking, SSE uses interactions or contributions of people to determine the relevance of documents on the Internet. Eurekster, for instance, implements some concepts defined by SSE "that harness the knowledge and behavior of online communities to increase search relevance and value for site visitors, site publishers, and advertisers." According to ZDNet, "Eurekster takes the concept of social networking a step further. Instead of simply making connections between individuals, it helps people locate information that their friends and colleagues already find interesting. It also takes search engine technology to a new level by personalizing results." Collarity is another example of SSE that combines search terms, URLs, selection of users and visitors to rank search results based on user’s interests. In the Collarity’s web site we can read: "Collarity is a search companion that understands your interest areas, preferences and search experiences. This information is distilled from the complex interaction of keywords and URLs. Collarity then connects you with the successful results of ‘like minded’ communities of searchers and provides contextually relevant results. At the same time, your experience is used to implicitly guide and help others."
Some research areas (e.g., SRI, SSE, information seeking, Web 2.0) show a preoccupation with people in the process of searching for information. Traditional IR models worry about documents, queries, recall, and precision; however, they are not concerned about the human behavior and how interactive tools can help users find the desired information more quickly. It is my opinion that IR systems, besides retrieving documents related to a query, should also provide tools to assist users move from the state of information need to the goal state of resolution. In the post "Why research about search?" I wrote some comments about problems we still face when searching for information. Perhaps, the perfect search can not be possible; nevertheless, information retrieval systems should be developed to take advantage of social environments and interactive tools and thus stimulate people to engage in an active information-seeking behavior, and not only supply their information needs but also extend their state of knowledge.
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