Making Sense of Information in Professional Work: Understanding and Enabling the Digital Library User

获取、管理和使用信息是所有形式的知识工作的核心活动。大多数专业人员（如律师、教师、记者、卫生专业人员和工程师）使用来自各种来源的信息，包括图书馆、万维网、同事和专业文件。在许多行业中，对专业数字资源的依赖程度越来越高，而这些资源通常只以订阅的方式提供。这些档案具有可靠性和权威性，反映了早期纸质档案的可靠性和权威性，而诸如可见的万维网等更广泛可获取的资源却不能提供这些可靠性和权威性。与传统资源相比，数字资源有可能更广泛地获得，更容易搜索，更容易重组并与正在进行的工作相结合。然而，越来越多的证据表明，现有的专家系统在易用性和价值交付方面存在不足。一个重要的原因是对专业人员如何处理信息以及如何设计系统以支持丰富的信息工作的理解不足。本项目将解决这个缺点，特别关注专业人员如何在使用信息的过程中理解信息。我们将重点关注两个行业，法律和新闻，这两个行业都广泛使用数字文档集合。这项工作将有两个主要方面：收集和分析有关专业人员如何处理信息的数据，从而确定系统设计的需求；提出、制作原型并测试满足这些需求的新颖设计解决方案。通过研究两种职业，就有可能得出概括和对比。数据收集将基于在参与者工作场所进行的观察和访谈。我们已经获得了富而德律师事务所（Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer）和《泰晤士报》的合作。我们将从具有各种角色和状态的员工收集数据，包括适当的团队中的不同成员。大多数数据分析将是定性的，利用诸如“上下文设计”之类的技术来理解从业者的活动和人工制品的设计和使用。我们还将应用德文的“意义制造方法论”，该方法论较少关注行为，而更多地关注心理过程与外部信息源之间的相互作用。其他与学习和理解相关的理论将在相关的情况下应用。分析将提供所研究的两个专业的信息工作实践的说明，并且还提供支持这些实践的工具的需求。这些需求将构成开发原型工具的基础，这些原型工具可以在工作环境中进行测试。重点将放在项目中开发的方法是否适合工作实践，并为用户的信息需求提供比当前可用工具更好的解决方案。研究结果将报告给学术和从业者（系统开发人员）社区。为此，除了用户社区合作伙伴外，该项目还有一个基于开发者社区的合作伙伴：Lexis Nexis UK，新闻和法律信息的提供者。他们的参与将确保原型系统开发以开发人员和用户的需求和限制为基础，并且有一个现成的途径向开发人员社区传播。总体而言，该项目将根据经验确定的工作实践和设计实践约束，以及对专业信息行为理解的理论贡献，为用户需求提供经过验证的解决方案。

Accessing, managing and using information are central activities for all forms of knowledge work. Most professionals (e.g. lawyers, teachers, journalists, health professionals and engineers) work with information from a wide variety of sources including libraries, the World Wide Web, colleagues and specialist documents. Within many professions, there is a growing reliance on specialist digital resources, often provided on a subscription-only basis. These offer a reliability and authority that reflects that of earlier paper archives but is not provided by more widely accessible resources such as the visible World Wide Web. Digital resources have the potential to be more widely available, more easily searched and more easily restructured and integrated with ongoing work than their traditional counterparts. However, there is a growing body of evidence that existing specialist systems are falling short in terms of ease of use and value delivered. One important reason is that there is an inadequate understanding of how professionals work with information and how systems can be designed to support rich information work.This project will address this shortcoming, focusing particularly on how professionals make sense of information in the process of working with it. We will focus on two professions, law and journalism, both of which make extensive use of digital document collections. The work will have two main strands: gathering and analysing data on how professionals work with information, leading to the identification of requirements for systems design; and proposing, prototyping and testing novel design solutions that address those requirements. By studying two professions, it will be possible to draw out generalisations and contrasts.Data gathering will be based on observations and interviews located in the workplaces of participants. We have secured the co-operation of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, a large law firm, and The Times newspaper. We will gather data from employees with a variety of roles and statuses, including different members of a team where appropriate. Most data analysis will be qualitative, drawing on techniques such as 'Contextual Design' for understanding practitioner activities and artefact design and use. We will also apply Dervin's 'Sense Making Methodology', which focuses less on behaviour and more on the interaction between mental processes and external information sources. Other theories related to learning and sense making will be applied as they become pertinent. Analysis will deliver accounts of the information work practices of the two professions being studied, and also provide requirements for tools to support those practices.Those requirements will form the basis for developing prototype tools that can be tested back in the work settings. The focus will be on whether the approaches developed within the project fit with working practices, and provide better solutions to users' information needs than currently available tools. Findings will be reported to both academic and practitioner (systems developers) communities.To this end, as well as user community partners, the project has a partner based within the developer community: Lexis Nexis UK, providers of news and legal information. Their participation will ensure that prototype system development is grounded in the requirements and constraints of developers as well as those of users, and also that there is a ready route for dissemination into the developer community.Overall, the project will deliver validated solutions to user requirements, based on empirically identified work practices and informed by design practice constraints, as well as theoretical contributions to the understanding of professional information behaviours.