Article by Information Sciences Professor Is the Most Requested.
An article coauthored by SIS Associate Professor Dania Bilal on children’s
information seeking is the single most requested article from the leading
information science journal, Information Processing & Management (IPM).
Out of some 80,000 downloaded articles from IPM's website this year, Bilal’s
article, co-authored by Joe Kirby, was the most requested article, according
to IPM’s parent company Reed Elsevier.
Bilal’s study analyzes patterns of information seeking behaviors of
seventh-grade science students compared to information science graduate
students using Yahooligans! Web search engine and directory.
The article is relevant, says Bilal, because it is one of only a few
scholarly articles that compare children’s and adult’s Web searching
behaviors. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, she
concludes that children need targeted instruction to help them develop
search strategies and reflective skills to self evaluate their Web searching
successes.System design improvements are also needed, she argues.
In a follow-up study, Bilal collected substantive survey data from children
that include their participation in the design of search engine interfaces
that make sense to them. No commercial search engines for children have
incorporated children’s design concepts to date, however.
Why is Dr. Bilal's article so successful?
Her article “addresses a very important research area in which many people
are interested and it is a very good article, with interesting results,”
says IPM editor, Dr. Tefko Saracevic, professor at Rutgers University.
Speaking of Experts
Dr. Bilal is quoted as an authority in a recent feature article in
Education Week, which examines new search engines aimed at children’s
needs. Entitled “Web Searches Often Overwhelm Young Researchers,” Dr. Bilal
warns that many of these “children’s search engines “don’t allow the
wide-ranging exploration that is a great part of the potential of the World
Wide Web.”
Yahooligans!, for example, uses categories that reflect grown-up
understandings of topics, rather than a child’s knowledge structure of these
topics.
Sources:
“Differences and similarities in information seeking: children and
adults as Web users.” Information Processing & Management,
Volume 38, Issue 5, September 2002, Pages 649-670 by Dania Bilal and Joe
Kirby.
“Web Searches Often Overwhelm Young Researchers: New Search Engines Aimed
at Children's Needs Seek to Clear Confusion.” Education Week,
December 1, 2004, Andrew Trotter.
