Aims

• To undertake a small scale study of the nature of collaborative activity in the process of searching for information, including the kinds of collaborative learning undertaken to acquire information searching skills.
• To examine how the transition to increasingly digital libraries will affect the nature of this collaboration - both in terms of preserving existing activities and opening up potential new forms of collaboration.
• To produce recommendations, firstly for enhancing the beneficial effects of collaborative searching with existing technology, and secondly for influencing the development of library systems that actively support social activities rather than, as at present, ignoring it.

Documents

• Collaboration in Physical and Digital Libraries
  Twidale, M., Chaplin, D., Crabtree, A., Nichols, D.M., O'Brien, J. and Rouncefield, M.
  British Library Research and Innovation Report no. 64

• Talking in the Library: Implications for the Design of Digital Libraries In Proceedings of ACM Digital Libraries '97, Philadelphia, PA, (Eds.) Allen, R.B. and Rasmussen, E., 221-228.

  This paper examines the role of ethnography in informing system design.

• Recommendation and Usage in the Digital Library (CSEG/2/97)

  This paper examines the general problem of resource quality, how recommendations address it and the role of usage data in generating recommendations.

• Designing Interfaces to Support Collaboration in Information Retrieval (CSEG/3/97) To appear in Interacting with Computers

  This paper discusses general issues of IR and collaboration.

• Matchmaking and Privacy in the Digital Library: striking the right balance In Proceedings of the 4th UK/International Conference on Electronic Library and Visual Information Research (ELVIRA 4), Milton Keynes, 6-8 May 1997, Aslib: London, UK, 31-38, ISBN 0851424015.

  This paper discusses adding matchmaking functionality to digital libraries.