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Information Searching Behavior: Between Two Principles

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Context: Nature, Impact, and Role (CoLIS 2005)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 3507))

Abstract

The paper considers different types of model and real-life information searching behavior. Only two behavioral principles correspond to all the diversity of information searching: the principle of least effort describing a model unmediated search and the principle of guarantied results describing a model mediated search. It is shown that real-life searching follows the same principles and that the principle of least effort describes not only unmediated search but also team and pseudo-mediated searches. To explain information searching behavior the ‘coverage space’ is considered. This model explains both choice of the principle and non-monotonicity of this choice. As an application of these results, the universally accepted myth about differences between searching on the Web and searching in ‘traditional’ IR systems is reevaluated.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of System Analysis, Russian Academy of Science, 9 prospect 60 Let Oktyabrya, 117312, Moscow, Russia

    Nick Buzikashvili

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  1. Nick Buzikashvili
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Strathclyde, Scotland

    Fabio Crestani

  2. Dept. of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde, G1 1XH, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

    Ian Ruthven

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Buzikashvili, N. (2005). Information Searching Behavior: Between Two Principles. In: Crestani, F., Ruthven, I. (eds) Context: Nature, Impact, and Role. CoLIS 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3507. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11495222_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11495222_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-26178-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-32101-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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