Information searching behavior: Between two principles

Abstract

The paper considers different types of model and real-life information searching behavior. Only two behavioral principles correspond to all the diversity of information searching: the principle of least effort describing a model unmediated search and the principle of guarantied results describing a model mediated search. It is shown that real-life searching follows the same principles and that the principle of least effort describes not only unmediated search but also team and pseudo-mediated searches. To explain information searching behavior the 'coverage space' is considered. This model explains both choice of the principle and non-monotonicity of this choice. As an application of these results, the universally accepted myth about differences between searching on the Web and searching in 'traditional' IR systems is reevaluated. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.