Compiled by world- class leaders in the field of collaborative information retrieval and search (CIS), this book centres on the notion that information seeking is not always a solitary activity and working in collaboration to perform information-seeking tasks should be studied and supported. Covering aspects of theories, models, and applications the book is divided in three parts:· Best Practices and Studies: providing an overview of current knowledge and state-of-the-art in the field.· New Domains: covers some of the new and exciting opportunities of applying CIS· New Thoughts: focuses on new research directions by scholars from academia and industry from around the world.Collaborative Information Seeking provides a valuable reference for student, teachers, and researchers interested in the area of collaborative work, information seeking/retrieval, and human-computer interaction.
Today's complex, information-intensive problems often require people to work together. Mostly these tasks go far beyond simply searching together; they include information lookup, sharing, synthesis, and decision-making. In addition, they all have an end-goal that is mutually beneficial to all parties involved. Such "collaborative information seeking" (CIS) projects typically last several sessions and the participants all share an intention to contribute and benefit. Not surprisingly, these processes are highly interactive.Shah focuses on two individually well-understood notions: collaboration and information seeking, with the goal of bringing them together to show how it is a natural tendency for humans to work together on complex tasks. The first part of his book introduces the general notions of collaboration and information seeking, as well as related concepts, terminology, and frameworks; and thus provides the reader with a comprehensive treatment of the concepts underlying CIS. The second part of the book details CIS as a standalone domain. A series of frameworks, theories, and models are introduced to provide a conceptual basis for CIS. The final part describes several systems and applications of CIS, along with their broader implications on other fields such as computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and human-computer interaction (HCI).With this first comprehensive overview of an exciting new research field, Shah delivers to graduate students and researchers in academia and industry an encompassing description of the technologies involved, state-of-the-art results, and open challenges as well as research opportunities.
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has emerged as a groundbreaking technology that promises to revolutionize many industries as well as people's personal and professional lives. This book discusses GenAI and its role in information access - often referred to as Generative Information Retrieval (GenIR) - or more broadly, information interaction.
The role of GenAI in information access is complex and dynamic, with many dimensions. To address this, following a brief introduction to GenAI and GenIR, the remainder of the book provides eight chapters, each targeting a different dimension or sub-topic. These cover foundations of GenIR, interactions with GenIR systems, adapting them to users, tasks, and scenarios, improving them based on user feedback, GenIR evaluation, the sociotechnical implications of GenAI for information access, recommendations within GenIR, and the future of information access with GenIR.
The book is targeted at graduate students and researchers interested in issues of information retrieval, access, and interactions, as well as applications of GenAI in various informational contexts. While some of the parts assume prior background in IR or AI, most others do not, making this book suitable for adoption in various classes as a primary source or as a supplementary material.
