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short-paper

'Too Much Serendipity': The Tension between Information Seeking and Encountering at the Library Shelves

Authors:

Shermaine Waugh,

Stephann MakriAuthors Info & Claims

CHIIR '17: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Conference Human Information Interaction and Retrieval

Pages 277 - 280

https://doi.org/10.1145/3020165.3022132

Published: 07 March 2017 Publication History

Abstract

The physical library shelves are regularly the site of serendipitous information discoveries, and are often sought out for this purpose. However, while some drawbacks to the shelves as information gateways have been documented, none to our knowledge relate to their capacity for facilitating serendipity. We present findings from a qualitative study of serendipity at the library shelves. This study uncovered a new drawback that we term the "seeking-encountering tension". On one hand, this tension entices people towards the relatively high-risk, high-reward activity of exploring new information avenues discovered serendipitously and, on the other, draws them back towards the relative safety of goal-directed information-seeking. We discuss some of the factors that contribute to this tension, and provide design suggestions for mitigating it. Understanding this tension can inform the design of physical and digital information environments that provide users the agency to switch between more and less focused information-seeking at will.

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Cited By

Pu ZBeam M(2024)The impacts of relevance of recommendations and goal commitment on user experience in news recommender designUser Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction10.1007/s11257-024-09405-134:4(925-953)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11257-024-09405-1
Harati HIsfandyari-Moghaddam A(2023)A model of planned and unplanned information-seeking behaviourJournal of Information Science10.1177/01655515231196390Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515231196390
Smets A(2022)Designing for serendipity: a means or an end?Journal of Documentation10.1108/JD-12-2021-023479:3(589-607)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-12-2021-0234
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

'Too Much Serendipity': The Tension between Information Seeking and Encountering at the Library Shelves
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Empirical studies in HCI

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHIIR '17: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Conference Human Information Interaction and Retrieval

March 2017

454 pages

ISBN:9781450346771

DOI:10.1145/3020165

Conference Chairs:
Ragnar Nordlie
Oslo & Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway
,
Nils Pharo
Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway
,
Program Chairs:
Luanne Freund
University of British Columbia, Canada
,
Birger Larsen
Aalborg University, Denmark
,
Dan Russel
Google, USA

Copyright © 2017 ACM.

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 the author(s) 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].

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SIGIR: ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval

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SIGCHI: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 March 2017

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CHIIR '17

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CHIIR '17: Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval

March 7 - 11, 2017

Oslo, Norway

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CHIIR '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 10 of 48 submissions, 21%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 55 of 163 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

Pu ZBeam M(2024)The impacts of relevance of recommendations and goal commitment on user experience in news recommender designUser Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction10.1007/s11257-024-09405-134:4(925-953)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11257-024-09405-1
Harati HIsfandyari-Moghaddam A(2023)A model of planned and unplanned information-seeking behaviourJournal of Information Science10.1177/01655515231196390Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1177/01655515231196390
Smets A(2022)Designing for serendipity: a means or an end?Journal of Documentation10.1108/JD-12-2021-023479:3(589-607)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2022
https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-12-2021-0234
Lee LOcepek MMakri S(2022)Information behavior patternsJournal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.2459573:4(594-608)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/asi.24595
Makri SBuckley L(2020)Down the rabbit holeJournal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.2423371:2(127-142)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/asi.24233
Buchanan GMcKay DMakri SAzzopardi LHalvey MRuthven IJoho HMurdock VQvarfordt P(2019)Take Me OutProceedings of the 2019 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3295750.3298935(45-53)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3295750.3298935
Lemos JFinn E(2019)Babel VR: Multimodal Virtual Reality Environment for Shelf Browsing and Book DiscoveryHCI International 2019 – Late Breaking Posters10.1007/978-3-030-30712-7_5(30-38)Online publication date: 20-Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30712-7_5
Makri SChen YMcKay DBuchanan GOcepek M(2019)Discovering the Unfindable: The Tension Between Findability and Discoverability in a Bookshop Designed for SerendipityHuman-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 201910.1007/978-3-030-29384-0_1(3-23)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-030-29384-0_1
McKay DBuchanan GChang S(2019)It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it: Design guidelines to better support online browsingProceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/pra2.2018.1450550103855:1(347-356)Online publication date: Feb-2019
https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.2018.14505501038
McKay DChang SSmith WBuchanan G(2019)The Things We Talk About When We Talk About BrowsingJournal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.2420070:12(1383-1394)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/asi.24200
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