About the Event

With an exponentially growing set of e-services and social networks that allow people to be not only consumers, but also producers of information, information seeking and sharing behaviors are rapidly changing. Innovations in areas such as information exchange and knowledge management are coming from scholarship in data sciences, and the “wisdom of the crowd” has become more than a passing trend. The focus of this event would be to discuss the latest developments in the field of social media and crowdsourcing specific to information seeking, knowledge management, and innovative methods for collaborative question-answering. Specifically, the event will facilitate discussions about and engage the audience in topics such as social search, community-based question-answering, and hybrid models for information seeking. These discussions will be guided by the organizers who come from a variety of backgrounds, institutions, and research areas.

Purpose and Intended Audience

This event is designed for an audience of researchers, faculty, Ph.D. students, practitioners, and members of the information industry. It is intended to bring researchers in the fields of social and collaborative information seeking, crowdsourcing, social media, as well as virtual reference (VR) and Social Question & Answer (SQA) services together to discuss their recent research findings and to set a course and agenda for future work. Thus, primary objectives are to:

• Share our expertise and research findings
• Discuss limitations and possibilities for future synergies
• Identify ways to share data and other resources
• Suggest and plan possible collaborations

Particularly, the discussion during this event will be approached from different angles - How does community participation affect information-seeking behaviors? What happens when search goes social? What could social search and VR services learn from each other to better serve users?