Who? - Collaborative Web Search: Who, What, Where, When, and Why - page 8

Web search was also common among middle- and high-school aged students ( Amershi and Morris ,
2008 ); for example, one librarian in their study noted that collaboration seemed to be a common
trend among teenagers, whom she observed to always gather in groups around the library's Internet
terminals except when checking their email. Twidale et al. ( 1997 ) found that university students
frequently worked together on information-seeking tasks in the college library, engaging in social
activities such as offering advice to fellow library users or asking a neighboring computer user how
they accomplished something.
Information workers are another group with collaborative information seeking needs.
Fidel et al. ( 2000 ) found that office workers frequently collaborated when retrieving information
from traditional sources, such as topics. Morris, M.R. ( 2008 ) found that information workers en-
gaged in a variety of collaborative behaviors when conducting Web searches. Evans and Chi ( 2008 )
survey of Mechanical Turk users about social search interactions also revealed that many information
workers in fields such as education, finance, healthcare, and government engaged with others while
searching.
In addition to library patrons, students, and information workers, families are another type of
group that also often have shared information needs, and they collaborate on satisfying those needs.
An example of this is Martha's collaborations with her husband George and sister Beth to learn
more about her asthma diagnosis. When users participated in a diary study of collaborative searches
performed either at work or at home ( Amershi and Morris , 2009 ), participants reported engaging
in several family-oriented collaborative searches, such as planning weekend activities or purchasing
theatre tickets. Family groups trying the WeSearch system ( Morris et al. , 2010b ) engaged in tasks
such as planning upcoming vacations and shopping for a new home computer. A survey study of
information workers' collaborative search habits ( Morris, M.R. , 2008 ), though not focused on at-
home activities, nonetheless found that respondents provided examples of familial collaborations,
including parents assisting children with homework assignments and family members jointly seek-
ing medical information relevant to a loved one. These collaborations can occur at home among
immediate family members (e.g., Martha and George), but can also occur remotely when family
members are distributed geographically (e.g., Martha and Beth).
Some search tools are designed to support specific user populations, such as Ari-
adne ( Twidale et al. , 1997 ), which is designed to support students working in libraries. It may also
be useful for general purpose collaborative search tools to recognize these common populations and
adapt to best serve them. This can be done explicitly, with group members stating who they are, but
could also be done implicitly. Social or school ties might be identified through social networking
services, such as Facebook ( http://facebook.com ) or Twitter ( http://twitter.com ) , where
many friends are often classmates. The presence of connections on a business-oriented social net-
work like LinkedIn ( http://www.linkedin.com ) might allow the collaborative search tool to
automatically infer a professional relationship among the group of searchers and, in turn, impact the
type of user interface options shown to or roles assigned to those users.