Three Challenges and Opportunities for Information Needs and Information Seeking Research Progress

1. How do you determine needs of POTENTIAL users (new communities of users)? It is certainly a challenge for anyone creating an innovative product and digital libraries will appeal to communities beyond those that would ordinarily use any existing physical library of the same or similar content. One opportunity here is to use the technology to capture some of the behaviors; another is to use the web hype to elicit statements of needs from newbies--capitalize on their awe to gather commentary, suggestions, and criticism. Of course, these data must be combined with data from more experienced users. This is basically a methodological challenge and opportunity pair.

2. How do we map search and discovery representations and mechanisms onto user needs? (this is really a conceptual interface problem--making a quick determination of user type (what user typology should we create is a subchallenge) and present a useful search engine or view of the DL. The opportunities here seem to be related to new systems that support browsing while allowing users to also apply analytical techniques...a sort of paradigm shift from "users have to learn how to be good searchers" to systems have to support natural inclinations and introduce/suggest more sophisticated strategies.

3. Most interesting of all, the challenge is to more closely couple needs, information-seeking behavior, and the manipulation and application of information. There are two types of opportunities here: a) field studies (e.g., Nardi; Nardi & Barreau; Suchman; etc.) that examine in detail how knowledge workers WORK. b) leveraging the technology to better trace the information life-cycle in workplace activities (creation, capture, flow, use, manipulation, application, communication, dispensation).