Collaborative Information Seeking: Toward New Theories and Applications
ACM GROUP 2010 Workshop
November 7, 2010
Sanibel Island, Florida, USA
http://collab.infoseeking.org/events/group2010workshop/

Collaboration is often required or encouraged for activities that are too complex or difficult to deal with for an individual. Similarly, many situations involving information seeking also call for people working together. Despite its natural appeal and situational necessity, collaborative information seeking (CIS) is an understudied domain. The nature of the available information and its role in our lives have changed significantly, but the methods and tools that are used to access and share that information in collaboration have remained largely unaltered.

The area of collaborative information seeking/retrieval/behavior (CIS/CIR/CIB) has drawn a new stream of interest to it in the recent years. This has been possible due to involvement and initiatives of several prominent researchers from various fields, such as IR, HCI, LIS, and CSCW. This workshop is aimed to take these efforts to the next level by focusing on theories and models that are grounded in the literature and existing empirical studies, as well as applications and tools that help us advance the field further.

We are interested in bringing together a group of researchers working on various conceptual and technical aspects of CIS for addressing a wide range of challenges in the field.

OBJECTIVES
We envision addressing the following objectives in the workshop:

* Identify and discuss theories and models from various fields that help us understand and evaluate different aspects of CIS processes.
* Demonstrate or review existing CIS systems, and discuss design sketches for the future tools.
* Share ideas about discussed before could help us in facilitating those situations.


In general, we want to keep the workshop lively with discussions, where the participants will be encouraged to share not only their own research, but also review relevant work from other researchers and venues.

THEMES

* Theories and models for CIS, CIR, CIB, and related areas.
* Methodologies for studying various CIS issues, particularly, evaluation of CIS systems, and user behavior in CIS environments.
* Tools, systems, and methods for supporting CIS activities.
* Review or synthesis of existing theories, models, tools, or applications relevant to enhance and advance our understanding of CIS.


SUBMISSIONS
We welcome submission from researchers and practitioners who are interested in conceptual and technical research on collaborative information seeking, search, retrieval, and sensemaking. For submission details, please see our workshop website http://collab.infoseeking.org/events/group2010workshop/. The workshop submission should be e-mailed to Dr. Chirag Shah (chirags@rutgers.edu) by 5 pm PST on September 12, 2010. If you have any questions about the workshop or your submission, please contact Dr. Shah.

Since the workshop will be highly interactive, the number of participants will be strictly limited. So, if you are interested in participating, please submit your workshop paper by the deadline.

KEY DATES
September 12, 2010: Position papers due
September 19, 2010: Notification of acceptance
October 1, 2010: Early registration deadline for GROUP 2010 conference
November 7, 2010: Workshop, followed by an optional group dinner

ORGANIZERS
Dr. Chirag Shah, Rutgers University
Dr. Madhu Reddy, Pennsylvania State University
Dr. Michael Twidale, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign