research-article

The "active" gatekeeper in collaborative information seeking activities

Authors:

Patricia Ruma Spence,

Madhu C. ReddyAuthors Info & Claims

GROUP '07: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work

Pages 277 - 280

https://doi.org/10.1145/1316624.1316666

Published: 04 November 2007 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

Multidisciplinary team members often must work together to find needed information. To identify when team members collaborate, why they collaborate, and how they collaborate during information seeking activities, we conducted a field study of a multidisciplinary patient care team. We found that the unit secretary, a non-clinical team member, had characteristics of various types of gatekeepers identified in previous studies. However, unlike those gatekeepers, the unit secretary also played a particularly active role during information seeking activities. Most medical information systems design focus on supporting collaboration amongst clinical staff. Our study highlights the importance of also supporting non-clinical team members.

References

[1]

Reddy, M. and P. R. Spence. Finding Answers: Information Needs of a Multidisciplinary Patient Care Team in an Emergency Department. in Proceedings of American Medical Informatics Association Fall Symposium (AMIA'06). 2006. Washington, D.C.

Google Scholar

[2]

Baggs, J. G., S. A. Ryan, C. E. Phelps, J. F. Richeson, and J. E. Johnson, The association between interdisciplinary collaboration and patient outcomes in a medical intensive care unit. Heart Lung, 1992. 21(1): p. 18--24.

Google Scholar

[3]

Allen, T. J., Managing the Flow of Technology. 1977, Cambridge: MIT Press. 320.

Google Scholar

[4]

Allen, T. J. and S. I. Cohen, Information Flow in Research and Development Laboratories. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1969. 14(1): p. 12--19.

Google Scholar

[5]

Allen, T. J., M. L. Tushman, and D. M. S. Lee, Technology Transfer as a Function of Position in the Spectrum from Research through Development to Technical Services. The Academy of Management Journal, 1979. 22(4): p. 694--708.

Google Scholar

[6]

McDonald, D. W. and M. S. Ackerman. Just Talk to Me: A Field Study of Expertise Location. in CSCW'98. 1998. Seattle, WA: ACM Press.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

Tushman, M. L., Special Boundary Roles in the Innovation Process. Administrative Science Quarterly, 1977. 22(4): p. 587--605.

Google Scholar

[8]

Nochur, K. S. and T. J. Allen, Do nominated boundary spanners become effective technological gatekeepers? {technology transfer}. Engineering Management, IEEE Transactions on, 1992. 39(3): p. 265--269.

Google Scholar

[9]

Edmunds, A. and A. Morris, The problem of information overload in business organisations: a review of the literature. International Journal of Information Management, 2000. 20(1): p. 17--28.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[10]

Mallak, L. A., D. M. Lyth, S. D. Olson, S. M. Ulshafer, and F. J. Sardone, Diagnosing culture in health-care organizations using critical incidents. International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, 2003. 16(4): p. 180--190.

Google Scholar

[11]

Reddy, M. C. and P. R. Spence, Collaborative information seeking: A field study of a multidisciplinary patient care team. Information Processing and Management, In Press.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

Star, S. L. and A. Strauss, Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 1999. 8(1--2): p. 9--30.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Tang CXiao YChen YGorman P(2024)Human Factors and Design for Supporting Healthcare TeamsHuman Computer Interaction in Healthcare10.1007/978-3-031-69947-4_11(263-289)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69947-4_11
Hertzum MHansen P(2018)Empirical studies of collaborative information seeking: a review of methodological issuesJournal of Documentation10.1108/JD-05-2018-0072Online publication date: 8-Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2018-0072
McNeese NDemir MReddy M(2017)Methodological Techniques and Approaches to Developing Empirical Insights of Cognition during Collaborative Information SeekingCognitive Systems Engineering10.1201/9781315155401-10(105-130)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2017
https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315155401-10
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The "active" gatekeeper in collaborative information seeking activities
1. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval

Recommendations

Collaborative information seeking: A field study of a multidisciplinary patient care team

Multidisciplinary teams are an essential aspect of modern organizational work. These teams often work in information-rich environments but little is known about their collaborative information seeking (CIS) behavior. We have been studying the CIS ...
Collaborative information seeking: The combined activity of information seeking and collaborative grounding

Since common ground is pivotal to collaboration, this paper proposes to define collaborative information seeking as the combined activity of information seeking and collaborative grounding. While information-seeking activities are necessary for ...
A survey of collaborative information seeking practices of academic researchers
GROUP '05: Proceedings of the 2005 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work

Information seeking and management practices are an integral aspect of people's daily work. However, we still have little understanding of collaboration in the information seeking process. Through a survey of collaborative information seeking practices ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

GROUP '07: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work

November 2007

422 pages

ISBN:9781595938459

DOI:10.1145/1316624

General Chairs:
Tom Gross
Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany
,
Kori Inkpen
Dalhousie University, Canada

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 November 2007

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

GROUP07

Sponsor:

GROUP07: ACM 2007 International Conference on Supporting Group Work

November 4 - 7, 2007

Florida, Sanibel Island, USA

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 125 of 405 submissions, 31%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025

Sponsor:
sigchi

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

8
Total Citations
View Citations
451
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)11
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 20 Dec 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Tang CXiao YChen YGorman P(2024)Human Factors and Design for Supporting Healthcare TeamsHuman Computer Interaction in Healthcare10.1007/978-3-031-69947-4_11(263-289)Online publication date: 14-Nov-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-69947-4_11
Hertzum MHansen P(2018)Empirical studies of collaborative information seeking: a review of methodological issuesJournal of Documentation10.1108/JD-05-2018-0072Online publication date: 8-Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2018-0072
McNeese NDemir MReddy M(2017)Methodological Techniques and Approaches to Developing Empirical Insights of Cognition during Collaborative Information SeekingCognitive Systems Engineering10.1201/9781315155401-10(105-130)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2017
https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315155401-10
Albar A(2015)A Proposed CIS Interface Based on the Analysis of Problem-Solving in Online Technical SupportCollaborative Information Seeking10.1007/978-3-319-18988-8_7(117-137)Online publication date: 2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18988-8_7
Spence PReddy M(2013)Beyond practices: A field study of the contextual factors impacting collaborative information seekingProceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology10.1002/meet.1450490113149:1(1-10)Online publication date: 24-Jan-2013
https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.14504901131
Ruthven IKamps JKraaij WFuhr N(2012)Grieving onlineProceedings of the 4th Information Interaction in Context Symposium10.1145/2362724.2362747(120-128)Online publication date: 21-Aug-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2362724.2362747
Bossen CGroth Jensen LWitt FPoltrock SSimone CGrudin JMark GRiedl J(2012)Medical secretaries' care of recordsProceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work10.1145/2145204.2145341(921-930)Online publication date: 11-Feb-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2145204.2145341
Skeels MTan DÇatalyürek ÜLuo GAndrade HSmalheiser N(2010)Identifying opportunities for inpatient-centric technologyProceedings of the 1st ACM International Health Informatics Symposium10.1145/1882992.1883087(580-589)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1882992.1883087

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Collaborative information seeking: A field study of a multidisciplinary patient care team

Collaborative information seeking: The combined activity of information seeking and collaborative grounding

A survey of collaborative information seeking practices of academic researchers