The role of historical and contextual knowledge in enterprise search
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2021-0170 |
| Published date | 20 December 2021 |
| Date | 20 December 2021 |
| Pages | 1053-1074 |
| 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 |
| Author | Marianne Lykke,Ann Bygholm,Louise Bak Søndergaard,Katriina Byström |
The role of historical and
contextual knowledge in
enterprise search
Marianne Lykke, Ann Bygholm and Louise Bak Søndergaard
Department of Communication and Psychology, Aalborg University,
Aalborg, Denmark, and
Katriina Bystr€
om
Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of the study is to examine enterprise searching practices across different work areas
and work tasks in an enterprise search system in an international biotechnology company.
Design/methodology/approach –A mixed-method approach studying employees’authentic search
activities during a 4-month period by log data, questionnaire survey and interviews. The log data analysed the
entire active searcher group, whereas the questionnaire and interviews focused on frequent searchers.
Findings –The three studies provided insight into the searching activities and an understanding of the way
searchers used the enterprise search system to search for information as part of their work tasks. The data
identifiedthree searcher groups, each with specific search characteristics. Four work task types were identified,
and for all four types the searchers applied a tracing searching technique with use of contextual and historical
relationships as paths.
Practical implications –The findings point to the importance of knowledge on historical and contextual
relations in enterprise search.
Originality/value –The work sheds new light on enterprise searchers’information search practices. A
significant contribution is the identification of a tracing search method used in relation to four essential work
task types. Another contribution is the importance of historical and contextual knowledge to support the
tracing search and decide what paths to follow.
Keywords Enterprise search, Workplace searchers, Information practice, Search techniques
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Enterprise search refers to managed search environments in the workplace that allows
federated search and makes content from multiple sources, such as intranets, document
management systems, e-mail and social media, searchable to a defined audience within an
organization (Kruschwitz and Hull, 2017). Related research is found under terminologies such
as “workplace search systems”(Freund et al., 2005, p. 441) and “enterprise document search”
(Schymik et al., 2015, p. 1049). Common feature to all is that enterprise search uses search
technologies to facilitate information retrieval, sharing and re-use of org anizational
information supporting development, decision-making, and the creation of new knowledge.
Structured as well as unstructured data are searchable.
Many enterprise searchers express a low degree of satisfaction with the enterprise search
due to contextual and technical factors (Stocker et al., 2015;Freund, 2015;Stenmark et al.,
2015;Cleverley and Burnett, 2019a). Several researchers report a widespread sentiment
among workplace searchers that enterprise search does not deliver on its promises (Phillips
et al., 2019). Even if it is difficult to exactly determine the amount of time spent on looking for
Historical and
contextual
knowledge
1053
The authors would like to thank the company for the generous opportunity to conduct this research and
the participants for their engagement and valuable insights on this topic. The authors would also like to
thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions in developing the paper further.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 31 August 2021
Revised 18 November 2021
Accepted 24 November 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 5, 2022
pp. 1053-1074
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-08-2021-0170
information, most people intuitively acknowledge it as a time-consuming task. Knowledge
workers spend a lot of time to find information of which as much as 10 to 20% is spent on
unsuccessful search (Schymik et al., 2015). In addition to time losses, time-consuming
searching for relatively simple work tasks also causes negative feelings (i.e. frustration)
(Borlund et al., 2012).
Cleverley and Burnett (2019b) found that a major part of user dissatisfaction depends on
other than technological factors and highlight the need to learn more about socio-cognitive
aspects. The existing studies tend only to cover specific occupations (i.e. Du et al., 2013;
Freund, 2015), specific issues such as barriers (Stocker et al., 2015), or specific types of
information systems (Stenmark, 2010;Joseph et al., 2013). The aim of this exploratory study is
to examine authentic enterprise searching across different organizational work areas. We
conducted three separate studies of employees’search activities in an operational system: log
data analysis, questionnaire survey and interviews. The purpose was to extend our
knowledge about enterprise search and provide insights for development of enterprise
information systems.
The first research question addressed the background of the enterprise searchers:
RQ1. What characterizes the enterprise searchers as regard organizational affiliation,
search topics and search frequency?
The next three research questions focused on the most frequent searchers:
RQ2. What work tasks prompt the frequent searchers’enterprise search?
RQ3. What searching techniques do the frequent enterprise searchers use in their
searching?
RQ4. What challenges do the frequent enterprise searchers meet, and how do they deal
with them?
Previous research
Although people have used the Internet for information searching for both private and work-
related purposes, and some practices are transferable to enterprise search, there are also
many essential differences (Jansen and Pooch, 2001). Fagin et al. (2003, p. 366) found that “the
determination of a ‘good answer’for intranet search is quite different than on the internet”.
Similarly, there are differences between professional and nonprofessional searchers at
workplaces. Surveys on professional enterprise searchers reveal that they appreciate Boolean
operators to formulate precise search queries (Joho et al., 2010;Russell-Rose et al., 2018).
Contrarily, the nonprofessional searchers seldom utilize formal search logic (Stenmark, 2010).
This paper focuses on nonprofessional searchers who search for information as a supporting
activity in work tasks rather than as a core activity of the task. In the following sections we
will review what we know about nonprofessional enterprise searchers’practices.
Work tasks
Work roles and associated work tasks are important contextual factors shaping how people
seek information (Bystr€
om and J€
arvelin, 1995;Vakkari, 2005;Ingwersen and J€
arvelin, 2005).
While most workplace studies have focused on how work tasks shape information-seeking
behaviour, only few empirical studies have studied how different work tasks affect a user’s
interactions with information systems.
In an evaluation study on an operational news archive of a newspaper, Blomgren et al.
(2004) found that the system performed “better”in user perspective than in system
perspective. The study setting was authentic in the sense that professional journalists carried
out one simulated work task and one real work task in their everyday work setting.
JD
78,5
1054
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