Libraries aren't just for Loners

If you want to find out more about our work at Lancaster on collaborative browsing, check out our URL: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/ariadne/

There are papers, comments, screendumps of our ARIADNE system and pointers to other Digital Libraries projects.

What are the kinds of social interaction in libraries?

1. Individual users interacting with individual librarians. This includes the well studied reference interview.

2. Library staff collaborating with each other, co-working on a common task, sharing hints tips and expertise in tacking a tricky search request of a client, teaching and learning from each other, particularly as new databases and information systems flood in, and the interfaces to existing systems are continually updated

3. Users interacting with each other. Libraries are public spaces. People arrange to meet there, bump into acquaintances and colleagues and can learn from each other by observing how others use the library's resources, or by asking them for help. Our informal studies at Lancaster University's library has revealed a substantial amount of interaction occurring around the OPAC and CD-ROM terminals. Groups of students bunch round one terminal discussing what they are doing or lean over to observe what their neighbour is doing and ask for help.

4. Any others??

What is worth noting is that all this cooperation and peer teaching often occurs DESPITE the existing computer systems rather than because of them. The systems are mostly designed to support the individual user: the lonely scholar who seems to have been the envisaged user. Indeed most of the work in database design in Computing Research has focused on how to make the user of a database feel that they are the sole user: to make other users completely invisible. In effect this approach when extended to a digital library will lead us to construct an entire virtual library for each user which they can wander around entirely alone. I see this as a dangerous trend in digital libraries; besides the fact that presented in such stark terms it sounds rather cold and soulless, from an information seeking perspective it is inefficient. Eliminating the other users of the library from your experience reduces the resources you have to help you in your searching.

The danger is that the trend to increasing use of remote access to libraries will divorce users from each other and mean that they are unable to ask people for help, serendipitously to bump into people or just watch what others are up to. That is, the move to digital libraries may lead to a loss of some very advantageous features in physical libraries, unless we take active measures to re-introduce them.

The other, more positive, side of this approach is that the move to digital libraries offers the opportunity for far greater and more diverse kinds of collaboration than are possible in physical libraries. You can collaborate with people who live tens or thousands of miles away. You can collaborate even if you are not using the library at exactly the same time.

The challenge is to develop systems that support the kinds of collaboration that people will want to use that will help them in their use of a library whose size will be growing at an ever faster rate, and whose information systems are likely to be revised far more frequently than is the case for most physical libraries.

What are the kinds of things that people will want to collaborate about?

Co-working

Given the huge size and number of databases we cannot expect even expert information scientists to be fully conversant with them all. A search request may need to be split between several people with slightly differing expertise and the results combined. Often sharing their experiences will lead to other ideas for further searching strategies.

Co-learning

The continual growth and redevelopment of the systems will lead to a continual need for learning and updating skills. This can be done most effectively as part of the working process when working with others and sharing expertise.

What do we mean by collaborative browsing?

Provisional Definition:

We use searching as a generic term for all kinds of information retrieval activity. However, we are particularly interested in a form of searching (for which we use the term browsing) that involves a search for information whose nature is difficult to precisely specify in advance. That is, the search goals evolve during, and as a consequence of, the search process.

Here are some examples of collaborative browsing (we expect our research to reveal others):

Collaborative learning

A substantial amount of collaborative learning occurs in libraries. Some may be formally organised by library staff, but there is also informal, spontaneous collaborative learning: users sit round terminals in small groups explaining techniques to each other, lean over to adjacent terminals and ask friends or neighbours for help. Library staff help end-users with their problems in-situ; synchronously and co-located. To observers from the Educational Research world this natural phenomenon is greatly to be desired and much effort is often made to convert conventional teaching approaches into such authentic, situated, collaborative learning activities. Therefore we should consider how to support this kind of learning which has evolved spontaneously as a user-centred solution to their problems.

In addition to the educational advantages of formal and informal collaborative learning, there is the potential for significant cost savings compared to traditional forms of teaching. This is an important consideration with a growth both in the numbers of people needing to learn search skills (and this includes library staff as well as end users) and in the amount of things that they have to learn.

Informal contacts with colleagues: Serendipitous Altruism

Serendipity has been long acknowledged within information retrieval as a phenomenon that skilled searchers know how to allow for and to exploit. However it need not just be personal. If your colleagues know what you are working on and happen by accident, in the process of undertaking their own searches, to come across something that may be of interest, they may altruistically pass the information on to you. The expectation is that, in similar circumstances, you will in future return the favour. It is important to note that the cost (in effort) to the benefactor must be minimal. That is why offering advice in a social context over a coffee is effective and why electronic mail and related systems facilitate the forwarding of potentially useful information to those whom the benefactor believes might be interested.

Browsing for people

Search re-use

These points fall under the theme of community (or organisational) memory : the preservation and dissemination of the knowledge (and activities) of members of the community. At present much information is lost as no steps are taken to preserve it: many activities simply repeat previous actions and fail to utilise anything learnt about the activity.

Sharing information: product and process

We believe that the external representations of the search should have features that minimise communication failures, but also support the detection and remediation of these errors by the participants. To achieve this computer support should enable searches to be visualised, communicated, edited and annotated. Our Ariadne system addresses these issues.

Although the digital library threatens existing collaborative activities it also opens up new opportunities that are presently prevented by the physical constraints of traditional libraries. For example, library staff can help searchers in any part of the world rather than only those who can make their way to the enquiries desk.

Physical libraries limit serendipitous meetings in several ways:

• people must be in the same physical library

• people must be browsing at the same time

• people must be in the same part of the library

• people must either:
  
  • already know each other, or
    
  • be prepared to approach strangers

• by providing an environment that does not encourage dialogue
  
  • e.g. you are meant to be quiet in the library

• accidental nature of meetings means that time is not scheduled
  
  • e.g. `I've got to be in a meeting in five minutes.'

• limited amount of information that people carry with them
  
  • e.g. `I got something interesting back in the office.'
    
  • this increases the acquisition costs of the item

A digital library could provide mechanisms to get round these limitations.

One might ask for things such as:

• who has used this book in the past?
  
• who looks at this book in the future (email me)
  
• introduce me to someone with similar interests judging by their browsing behaviour
  
• show me some books that a (anonymous) similar searcher to me has looked at that I haven't

Lest this all sound rather utopian, let us remember that:

• We still have to build these things

• They have to be usable and useful to people

Librarians have a long tradition of concern for the privacy of their users. Social interaction can impinge on this unless great care is taken. Furthermore what is acceptable in a physical library (such as watching what others are doing) may not be acceptable in its virtual equivalent in a digital library.