Collaborative Aspects of Information Retrieval Tools: Summarising three action case studies

Information retrieval (IR) tools are engaged to find information in electronic form, in databases, digital libraries, and networks. However, the advent of the web technology has boosted the amount of information available to us way beyond our cognitive capacity. The importance of good IR tools has thus increased and the tools have become natural focal points for organisational information seeking. This situation offers a possibility to exploit the collaborative efforts of the individual users. However, is the opportunity utilised? In action case studies of a search engine, a notifier program, and a recommender system on a corporate intranet, this study seeks the answer to that question. The conclusion is that most IR tools have neglected to incorporate support for collaborative action, or allowing awareness of other users with similar information needs. By integrating functionality from all three tools, according to the design implications presented here, future systems should be able to benefit more from the collective information seeking efforts of the organisation.