Collaborative information seeking and expertise seeking: different discourses about similar issues
| Date | 11 September 2017 |
| Published date | 11 September 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-04-2016-0053 |
| Pages | 858-876 |
| Author | Morten Hertzum |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Collaborative information seeking
and expertise seeking: different
discourses about similar issues
Morten Hertzum
Royal School of Library and Information Science,
University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose –The purposeof this paper is to compare and contrastresearch on collaborativeinformation seeking
(CIS) and expertiseseeking (EXS) to identify focal themes, blind spots, and possibilities for cross-fertilization.
Design/methodology/approach –Existing research was reviewed. The review consisted of a content
analysis of 70 (CIS) and 72 (EXS) studies with respect to the context, scope, process, and setting of CIS and
EXS, supplemented with a bibliometric analysis of the references in the reviewed studies.
Findings –In CIS, the context is a group of actors collaborating on a shared task. In EXS, the information
need is held by an individual but resolved by consulting other people. While the typical scope of EXS studies
is source selection, CIS studies mostly concern the consultation of the sources and the use of the obtained
information. CIS and EXS studies also attend differentially to the information-seeking process. Only 4 percent
of the references in the reviewed studies are cited in both CIS and EXS research. The author concludes that, at
present, CIS and EXS are different discourses about similar issues.
Research limitations/implications –Increased interaction between CIS and EXS will advance research in
both areas and prevent duplication of effort. Topics for future research are identified. It should be noted that
the findings are limited to the 142 studies reviewed.
Originality/value –By analyzing CIS in the context of EXS, and vice versa, this study provides a fresh look
at the information-seeking research that attends to collaboration.
Keywords Information behaviour, Information studies, Collaborative information seeking,
Collaborative search, Expertise seeking, People finding
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
People frequently exchange information to satisfy information needs and facilitate task
progress. Research on such information behaviorsneedstocoverthefine-grained issues of the
emotions associated with information seeking as well as broader issues such as the differences
between intra- and inter-organizational information seeking. It needs to account for brief
exchanges, for long-term collaborations, and for evolution in the needs and uses of information.
It should have something to say about the factors that influence source selection and how these
factors interact with the information need. And it should not just offer descriptive accounts but
also allow predictions to be made, for example, about the conditions under which different
information systems will be experienced as supportive of the information behaviors.
Two research areas that pursue these challenging issues are collaborative information
seeking (CIS; e.g. Fidel et al., 2000; Foster, 2006; Shah, 2014) and expertise seeking (EXS; e.g.
Gerstberger and Allen, 1968; Woudstra and van den Hooff, 2008; Hertzum, 2014). CIS
approaches information seeking as an activity performed in a group setting. It has, for
example, been defined as “the study of the systems and practices that enable individuals to
collaborate during the seeking, searching, and retrieval of information”(Foster, 2006, p. 330).
EXS approaches information seeking as an individual activity in which another person is
selected as the information source. It has, for example, been defined as “the activity of
selecting people as sources for consultation about an information need”(Hertzum, 2014,
p. 775). While CIS is a fairly recognized label, EXS is also referred to as expert finding or,
simply, source selection.
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 73 No. 5, 2017
pp. 858-876
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-04-2016-0053
Received 30 April 2016
Revised 19 August 2016
Accepted 30 August 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
858
JD
73,5
At first sight, CIS and EXS appear to exhibit considerable overlap. They are both about
collaboration among people in search of information. The motivation for this study is,
however, that beneath the similarities CIS and EXS are quite different. They emerge from
different discourses and open for different perspectives on information seeking.
In countering the risk that a research area gets “trapped in its own discursive
formations”(Wiegand, 1999, p. 24) such differences present a welcome opportunity for
reflection. This study aims to compare and contrast CIS and EXS to expound focal themes,
identify blind spots, and explore possibilities for cross-fertilization. Methodologically, the
study is a review of existing CIS and EXS research. Analyzing CIS in the context of EXS,
and vice versa, provides a fresh look at the information-seeking research that attends to
collaboration ( for reviews of either EXS or CIS, see e.g. Hertzum, 2014; Shah, 2014).
The comparative approach also means that the differences between CIS and EXS receive
more attention than the commonalities.
In the following, we describe the review method employed in this study (Section 2),
comparatively analyze the research areas of CIS and EXS (Section 3), and discuss the
implications of the analysis for CIS and EXS research (Section 4).
2. Method
In this study, CIS research and EXS research were compared and contrasted by means of
content analysis of existing papers, supplemented with a simple bibliometric analysis.
Figure 1 illustrates the process of selecting and coding the papers included in the analyses.
2.1 Two recent reviews
The starting point for the selection of the papers to be analyzed was two recent reviews.
For CIS, we selectedthe review by Shah (2014). In the typology of Paréet al. (2015), this paper
is a narrativereview because an explicit strategyfor the selection of the reviewedpapers is not
presentedand because conceptual as well as empiricalpapers are reviewed.Shah (2014, p. 216)
References in the two base reviews
• CIS: 99 references
• EXS: 88 references
Excluded references
• CIS: not about CIS (21), books and
monographs (5), not retrievable (3)
• EXS: not about EXS (16)
Included references
• CIS: 70 references
• EXS: 72 references
Included references
• References from reviews: 70 and 72
• References of references: 1,903 and 2,925
Content analysis
• Coding of context, scope, process, setting
• Category definitions in Table I
Bibliometric analysis
• CIS: 1,973 references (from 71 papers)
• EXS: 2,997 references (from 73 papers)
Notes: CIS, collaborative information seeking; EXS, expertise seeking
Figure 1.
The reference
selection process
859
CIS and EXS
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