Observations and Literature Review by Barbara J. Hampton, 2003
in partial fulfillment of the requirements of ILS 537-70
under the supervision of Dr. Mary Brown
at Southern Connecticut State University
This paper examines the
conflicts between structured query access to electronic information and the
more serendipitous discoveries that might occur more readily in the traditional
library. Valuable insights are sometimes had by virtue of a "happy accident"
connecting diverse information via a creative mind in new ways. Using data
from observations of information seeking behavior, interviews of library users,
and a survey of 416 adults, we measured the role of browsing (a common approach
to serendipitous discovery of information) in the search strategies of various
users. These reported behaviors were then compared to the methods which foster
creative research and discovery.
Until recently, the role of serendipity as a productive agent in society appears
to have been held in disdain. Inventors, scientists, business leaders, and
researchers took full credit for their successes and implied that these were
the result of hard work rather than good luck. Edison (1932) said "Genius
is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration." Reversing
this trend, Jones (1991), Flatow (1993), and Roberts (1989), among others
have published popular works celebrating accidental inventions that were the
result of serendipity. A recent query to the search engine Google.com using
"joy of finding out" produced 230 hits.
Simultaneously, the advent and exponential growth of electronic keyword searching
and the declining use of print information sources may be impeding the serendipity
that browsing the adjacent library shelves, journal displays, or even paper
catalogue cards fosters. This paper addresses five questions concerning serendipity
in information seeking behavior:
1. To what extent are current information seeking preferences impeding the accidental discovery of useful information?
2. What paradigms best describe the role of serendipity in information seeking?
3. How has productive library research serendipity been observed in specific domains?
4. What intangible benefits do opportunities for serendipitous discovery offer the human psyche?
5. How can librarians and information specialists support serendipity in information seeking?
To assess current information seeking preferences of a variety of users, a
graduate school library science class designed and administered a survey
questionnaire to a diverse group of adults. Survey research has been used
in the information field as a useful technique for providing generalized descriptions
of certain aspects of information-seeking behavior. Analysis of responses
and patterns is also useful in designing future research studies by identifying
issues and terminology meaningful to a particular group of individuals.
A convenience sample was used by 17 researchers distributing paper or electronic
questionnaires to participants in the northeastern, northwestern, southeastern,
southwestern, south central, and mid-western sections of the United States.
Four hundred sixteen
adults participated in the study. Participants were not paid for their participation.
Of the participating adults, 65% were female. Respondents' reported highest
educational levels were 31% high school, 38% bachelor's degree, 20% master's
degree, and 9% doctoral degree. Age groups represented were disproportionately
older middle-aged (46-55 years) 28% ; other groups included: 18-25 years,
19%; 26-35 years, 19%; 36-45 years, 18%; 56-65 years, nine per cent; and over
65 years, 6%. Predominantly, respondents resided in the northeastern United
States (61%). All other regions of the country were also represented, excepting
the north central: northwest, 13%; southwest, 6%; midwest, 1%; south central,
6%; south east, 12%. The majority of respondents described themselves as professionals
(51%). Students comprised the next largest (19%) portion of the sample. Clerical,
sales, and trade workers were 12% of the group, retired seniors 8%, and 8%
were not employed.
One instrument, delivered either in printed or electronic format, was used
for collecting data. No personally identifying data was collected, although
most respondents were acquainted with the researchers requesting their participation.
The instrument consisted of a cover letter of welcome and directions and 38
items, organized into 8 single and 7 multi-part questions and 7 demographic
questions. Each of the 8 single and 7 multi-part questions was designed to
elicit information about various aspects of the individual's information behavior.
Responses were coded and tallied within various demographic sub-groups and
across the entire sample.
The Internet was confirmed as the preferred source of information for personal
research by 52% of respondents overall. See Table 2.
Among Traditional Students and Students (unspecified), this preference rose
to two-thirds of respondents or more. The next most popular choice of information
sources was People (24% of respondents overall). While 13% overall chose "Books"
as their preferred source, only 5% identified "Browsing in Libraries"
as the preferred source. Browsing on the Internet was not one of the options.
While some viewing of the Internet might be described as browsing (for example,
scanning within a known website), broader searching via a search engine with
keywords would not.
When asked to identify the primary purpose of library visits, the dominant
response was in search of something particular, either by title or topic,
together accounting for 71%. See Table 1. Those who
reported going to the library most often to browse constituted 13%. Only 6%
reported that they do not visit libraries (although it is unclear whether
this also excludes remote access to libraries via the Internet). Programs
and Bringing Someone Else to the Library appeared as providing only rare impetus
for library visits, 3% and 4%, respectively. Those who identified themselves
as "Professionals-Law" cited the search for a particular book or
item as the reason for a library visit more often (67%) than other respondents.
Students - Traditional (65%), and Students -Returning (32%), Professionals
(39%), and Professionals - Education (39%) were most likely to be searching
for a particular topic. Thus conscious efforts at browsing play a minor role
in library use at present.
1. The Effect of Current Preferences for Internet
Information
The Internet is rapidly becoming the primary if not sole source for information
for many Americans, as confirmed by the survey reported by Hampton (2003)
and Bishop (2003). Yet electronic sources (the Internet, computer databases,
etc.) offer poor support for serendipity. Ford (1999) examined the disconnect
between information retrieval systems and creative thinking, where the results
ranked highest in relevance by the search algorithm tend to represent convergent
thinking, confirming the existing conceptualizations of the searcher rather
than generation new insights.
Computer searches consist almost exclusively of structured queries in which
the user selects specific terms and sources for a search. Other sources, intellectually
adjacent to the original query, may not be retrieved because of variations
in the terms occurring in the source. In the traditional, physical library,
both materials and finding tools display holdings in relationship to their
subjects: books on rocks are located near books on minerals; clippings on
the history of the Pomperaug Plantation are in the vertical file near the
history of Russian Village, in the Southbury Public Library's files on the
history of the town; a search in the periodical index for "presidential
elections, judicial contests of" will steer a searcher to the VanBuren
election as well as the Bush-Gore election. When results are retrieved as
electronic documents, delivered directly to the computer screen where the
researcher is working, the user misses these "intellectually adjacent"
items.
The physical search process also brings into view unrelated ideas that were
not sought and might even have been avoided. In perusing a display on singer
Marian Anderson, a student might see Ryan's (2002) depiction of the segregated
public accommodations that she encountered. Gup (1997) decries our declining
exposure to new problems, topics, and ways of thinking as a result of electronic
searching. The searcher retrieving electronic documents from a keyword search
may never see anything that the search engine doesn't drop into his or her
results list.
Horace Walpole, an eighteenth century British writer, created the term "serendipity"
from the name given an imaginary kingdom in a fairy tale in which the principle
characters "making discoveries by accident and sagacity. . . . for you
must observe that no discovery of a thing you are looking for comes under
this description." (Word History, "serendipity, American Heritage
Dictionary (1992), p. 1647, quoting Walpole.) Contemplating instances of serendipity,
Liestman (1992) describes six paradigms of serendipity and their application
to information seeking:
•Coincidence - discovery by purely random luck;
•Prevenient grace - discovery benefiting from the efforts of others (e.g., through cataloguing and classification) performed on behalf of the searcher by others unseen and unknown;
•Synchronicity - simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events;
•Perseverance - the drudge method of exhaustive and open-ended searches until a discovery is made;
•Altamirage - discovery as a result of the searcher's habits, character, knowledge which uniquely connect the searcher with information;
•Sagacity - discoveries through intuition and skill which consciously or unconsciously steer the searcher to a fruitful source of information.
Coincidence and synchronicity are inconsistent with Walpole's concept, which
includes the interaction of accident and sagacity, (discerning, farsighted,
wise). Examples in the library occur when a user spots a resource that may
be alphabetically sequential or on the way to a chosen resource. Relying purely
on stochastic factors, such examples would not be ripe for information system
planning and manipulation, and will thus not be further considered in this
paper.
The "prevenient grace" and "sagacity" paradigms provide
a role for the skill and efforts of the librarian in identifying and organizing
promising resources, whereas user factors are critical in the "perseverance"
and "altamirage" paradigms. In Liestman's (1992) examples of sagacity-driven
discoveries (altamirage and sagacity), the user was able to illuminate the
significance of a piece of information through the light of an existing knowledge
base, of which the librarian will have little control. To benefit from serendipitous
encounters, this "prepared mind" must also be open and questioning.
(Foster & Ford, 2003; Liestman, 1992).
The print resources allowed them to look for 'one thing and find another'. The computerized system, on the other hand, was designed to be too specific to allow for the flexibility needed to facilitate construction [of a theory of the case]. . . . They were willing to use databases when the systems met their needs, particularly when they were looking for a specific case that they already knew about. However, when their state of knowledge was more ambiguous and ill-defined they found the database less useful. Databases worked well for routine tasks and specific inquiries but no so well for complex tasks and unspecified queries. (p. 41)
While the lawyers and journalists generally made their serendipitous discoveries on their own, historians working with original documents and archival material described their reliance on the archivists to Duff & Johnson (2002). Following the sagacity paradigm, the historians turn to the archivists to recommend particular collections as useful for a particular research problem:
One historian mentioned that, although he went to an archives with a list of names he wanted to check into, he did not mention this list when he talked to the archivists hoping they would "suggest things to begin with in case I diverted them in a certain way and that closed down other options that I didn't know about." (p. 483)
4. Intangible Benefits of Serendipity
In addition to "functional needs" (factual knowledge) for information,
consumer information has been shown to serve hedonic (pleasure-giving) needs,
innovative needs, aesthetic needs, and sign needs (symbolic and social expression).
(France, Yen, Wang & Chang, 2002). Internet keyword searching and traditional
classification schemes can serve the factual information needs well. France,
et al. (2002) propose a model for data mining and Web searching which acknowledges
the other information needs and recommend data mining tasks (association rules,
clustering, classification, and forecast) particularly suited to those needs.
Their proposal notes that "the data mining process does its searching
based on the data itself" rather than relying on the user's query. (p.
248). The non-factual information needs are poorly accessed via traditional
structured queries, necessitating support of serendipitous connections found
in data mining to optimize consumer information and decision-making.
As Gup (1997) notes, serendipity can also expand our thinking beyond the expected
and our parochial views. Fundamentally, psychologists point to the innate
curiosity of human nature as motivation for much information browsing. (Case,
2002, p. 84-86). Judging from anecdotes of serendipitous finds related by
Liestman, searchers also enjoy being winners in the information lottery: capturing
the elusive tidbit of knowledge or blending disparate concepts creatively
for new discoveries.
Jack endorses the "adversarial approach," particularly as it applies to online searching. Implicit in this pugnacious attitude, he says, is the belief that online databases and services "are not to be regarded as close personal friends but as temporary whiies [sic.] which might turn on the searcher at any moment." He advises not take zero (0) postings as an answer. "The searcher must always be prepared to call up any trick in the book to outsmart the database. Fight back. Don't be gentle. Take it personally." (Liestman, 1992, quoting Robert F. Jack (Dec. 1985), "Meatball searching: The adversarial approach to online information retrieval," Database 8, 50.)
5. Information Services that Support Serendipity
Open classified stacks are basic to productive browsing. (Liestman, 1992)
Freed from the space and maintenance issues of paper catalogues, online public
access catalogues (OPACs) can increase the number and variety of access points:
more subject entries, more cross-referencing, context searching, searching
of notes and contents entries, etc. Liestman (1992) notes criticisms of existing
class schemes and the limitations inherent in the use of controlled vocabulary.
In predicting the demise of specialized thesauri to construct bibliographic
data, Svenonius (2001) states:
The situation where users searching for information must translate their search terms into the vocabularies of a number of different retrieval languages is no longer tolerable. Until better alternatives are developed, users will cross-database search using natural language.
. . . The requirements for a universal bibliographic language and for sophisticated search engines dictate that the single most important direction for vocabulary development is toward the large-scale mapping of natural-language vocabulary onto controlled vocabularies. (p. 194-195)
An important goal in the creation of digital libraries is the mapping of "natural"
vocabularies to metadata vocabularies, which Borgman (2000) demonstrates is
complicated by semantic and syntactic issues. As digital information grows
in depth and scope, Borgman notes that content designed for one community
of users may be pertinent to others who approach the topic with different
terminology and different levels of expertise, making structured query searching
problematic. The information professional must bridge vocabulary and interface
differences among different audiences.
Bibliographic training generally focuses on the query methods for particular
sources, but Liestman (1992) reminds us of the importance of mental preparation
to think about a topic: brainstorming, reading or discussing a topic, removing
distractions, and remaining flexible in conceptualizing a topic. These are
skills which can benefit structured searching as well as moments of serendipity.
The corporate library of a research organization can support an environment
of rich communication and free-flowing information. (Koenig, 2003) By inculcating
in the researcher the value of current-awareness reading and browsing, however,
the librarian can plant the seeds of future serendipitous discoveries. To
the extent that the librarian is the crucible in which domain knowledge and
information skills are joined, these two mechanisms support the importance
of communications between the researcher and the information professional,
so that librarian is attuned to the potential connections between information
sources and user needs. Koenig (2003) urges librarians in research libraries
to coach users on current awareness services, periodically interviewing key
employees to develop and update profiles of their interests and responsibilities.
Foster and Ford (2003) suggest hypertext navigation can be used to exploit
serendipitous connections. Browsing and navigation interfaces tap into users'
"recognition knowledge" by offering categories and choices in multiple
windows, and menus that don't require the user to recall specific terms. Borgman
(2000) describes these features as particularly appropriate for smaller, focused
collections in which choices are limited and for searching ill-defined problems.
After hypothesizing that results under current structured queries in the middle
ground of relevancy may best support creative thinking, Ford (1999) sets a
goal for information retrieval systems to be able to draw disparate concepts
or entities together in new ways to suggest new themes or patterns, perhaps
using artificial intelligence and fuzzy logic.
While some of these tools remain concepts under development, others are simple
extensions of existing information science. The most important steps are the
recognition of serendipity as a productive and creative research tool and
the collaboration between librarian and searcher to set the stage for serendipitous
discoveries.
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Question? Problems? Suggestions? Please contact page owner, Barbara J. Hampton.
Last revised 21 November 2003.