iRODS Primer: Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System
Arcot Rajasekar, Reagan Moore, Chien-Yi Hou, Christopher A. Lee, Richard Marciano, Antoine de Torcy, Michael Wan, Wayne Schroeder, Sheau-Yen Chen, Lucas Gilbert, Paul Tooby, and Bing Zhu
Collaborative Web Search: Who, What, Where, When, and Why
Meredith Ringel Morris and Jaime Teevan
Multimedia Information Retrieval
Stefan Rüger
Online Multiplayer Games
William Sims Bainbridge
Information Architecture: The Design and Integration of Information Spaces
Wei Ding and Xia Lin
Reading and Writing the Electronic Book
Catherine C. Marshall
Hypermedia Genes: An Evolutionary Perspective on Concepts, Models, and Architectures
Nuno M. Guimarães and Luís M. Carrico
Understanding User-Web Interactions via Web Analytics
Bernard J. (Jim) Jansen
XML Retrieval
Mounia Lalmas
Faceted Search
Daniel Tunkelang
Introduction to Webometrics: Quantitative Web Research for the Social Sciences
Michael Thelwall
Exploratory Search: Beyond the Query-Response Paradigm
Ryen W. White and Resa A. Roth
New Concepts in Digital Reference
R. David Lankes
Automated Metadata in Multimedia Information Systems: Creation, Refinement, Use in Surrogates, and Evaluation
Michael G. Christel
Copyright © 2018 by Morgan and Claypool
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Researching Serendipity in Digital Information Environments
Lori McCay-Peet and Elaine G. Toms
www.morganclaypool.com
ISBN: 9781681730936 print
ISBN: 9781681730943 ebook
DOI: 10.2200/S00790ED1V01Y201707ICR059
A Publication in the Morgan and Claypool Publishers series
SYNTHESIS LECTURES ON INFORMATION CONCEPTS, RETRIEVAL, AND SERVICES, #59
Series Editor: Gary Marchionini, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Series ISSN: 1947-945X Print 1947-9468 Electronic
Researching Serendipity in Digital Information Environments
Lori McCay-Peet
Dalhousie University
Elaine G. Toms
The University of Sheffield
SYNTHESIS LECTURES ON INFORMATION CONCEPTS, RETRIEVAL, AND SERVICES #59
ABSTRACT
Chance, luck, and good fortune are the usual go-to descriptors of serendipity, a phenomenon aptly often coupled with famous anecdotes of accidental discoveries in engineering and science in modern history such as penicillin, Teflon, and Post-it notes. Serendipity, however, is evident in many fields of research, in organizations, in everyday life—and there is more to it than luck implies. While the phenomenon is strongly associated with in-person interactions with people, places, and things, most attention of late has focused on its preservation and facilitation within digital information environments. Serendipity’s association with unexpected, positive user experiences and outcomes has spurred an interest in understanding both how current digital information environments support serendipity and how novel approaches may be developed to facilitate it. Research has sought to understand serendipity, how it is manifested in people’s personality traits and behaviors, how it may be facilitated in digital information environments such as mobile applications, and its impacts on an individual, an organizational, and a wider level. Because serendipity is expressed and understood in different ways in different contexts, multiple methods have been used to study the phenomenon and evaluate digital information environments that may support it. This volume brings together different disciplinary perspectives and examines the motivations for studying serendipity, the various ways in which serendipity has been approached in the research, methodological approaches to build theory, and how it may be facilitated. Finally, a roadmap for serendipity research is drawn by integrating key points from this volume to produce a framework for the examination of serendipity in digital information environments.
KEYWORDS
serendipity, digital information environments, user experience, human–centered information retrieval, human–computer interaction
Contents
1.4 What Do We Mean by Serendipity in Digital Information Environments?
2 What Drives Serendipity Research?
2.3 Filter Bubbles
2.4 User Experience
2.5 User Strategies
2.6 Understanding the Phenomenon
2.7 Summary
3.1 Serendipity as a Process or Experience
3.2 Serendipity as a Quality
3.3 Summary