About This Blog

Hello,

This is a blog for my Principles of Searching Final Project. It is a collection of posts made over about a five week period where I worked with my Client to fulfill their information needs. We had the option to do a blog, and I jumped at the chance. I chose to use a blog because you can treat it like an interactive paper. For example, by clicking the different weeks to see the posts from that week, or if you only want to see e-mail correspondence or read my analysis you can click on one of the Labels which will recall all the posts I marked with said label. You can find both the Labels and Blog Archive on the right.

The only downside I have found is that currently Blogger has no way of reversing the posts so that you can read them from oldest to newest, so you need to navigate through using the Blog Archive (which I was able to figure out how to reverse the order of)

I hope you enjoy reading my 'paper' and thank you for a very interesting and educational semester.

Christine Otto

Conclusions

I really enjoyed this project. It was good to get a chance to help someone and to learn along the way. I felt like it brought together a lot of what we learned throughout the semester. Below I make note of some of the most important things I learned from this experience. I tried to put them in some kind of order, but really, they are all important to realize as you try to help people find information.

I would say that the most important part of Searcher-Client relations is attitude or persona. You need to get a reading from what the Client is like from your communication with them. This might be more difficult to do if you are communicating though e-mails but there are subtle clues. How officially do their e-mails look? Do they use emotion-cons or smiles? Do they prefer form style formalized e-mails or do they use slang? All of these things tell you something about the user and help you decided the best way to respond to them so that your communication relationship is stable and effective.

If attitude is the most important part of Searcher-Client relations then feedback is the second. Without a stable Searcher-client relationship we will not get the effective feedback we need to know how to proceed with our searches. That said we need to make it clear to Clients that their feedback is important to us, it is necessary for us to proceed with searches and to recall for them the best results we can find. Part of being a good searcher is always asking the Client on more time, is that what you were looking for or is there something else? And be available, let them know they are not being bothersome if they come back to you with another question.

That said I felt I was fortunate to have a client who I knew I could get in touch with easily. She happens to spend a lot of time online, using instant messaging, checking e-mail, and reading my blog. From this I learned that I must have multiple ways to contact a Client whether it be by fax, e-mail, phone, etc. And despite all that effort on my part, if they don't really want my help then they I won't be able to contact them and that can be very frustrating.

Also, it is important to be clear about when the Client need the information. I found that you need to take into consideration the kind of information being sent, the amount, and there for the time it will take to get to the Client and be looked at. Drawing from personal experience, I know I don't read my mail everyday so it makes sense that everyone else doesn't either. I might be a few days or more before we receive any feed back from our Client.

On that note, sometimes Clients need a push, a reminder e-mail or phone call. Some people are not the best at keeping deadlines, or are not the most organized. It is not our job to organize their lives for them, only to provide the information they ask for in a timely and organized manor ourselves, from then on it is up to the Client and how they want to deal with the information we've provided. They may still blame us for failures, but remember it is not our fault.

Survey Results

I sent an e-mail using the survey monkey format requesting my Client complete a brief survey about their experience. Below are the results of my survey. My Client's responses are in Purple.

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Performance Survey: How Did I do?

The Client was asked to answer several multiple choice and short answer questions.

Rating scale is as follows unless otherwise noted.

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Agree

Somewhat Agree

Neutral

Somewhat Disagree

Disagree

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Part I – Communication –

Communications with Searcher were

Timely. - Agree

Easy to understand. - Agree

Content appropriate in terms of my profession. - Agree

Please comment and tell us what you liked or didn't like about communications with your Searcher.

My searcher was quick and efficient, kept me informed of articles she was finding, and overall a great help.

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Part II – Materials –

Materials provided by the Searcher

Were relevant. - Somewhat Agree

Were accurate. - Agree

Were organized. - Agree

Were in a format I could easily read. - Agree

Met the quota requested by the Client. - Agree

Please tell use what you liked/didn't like about the materials that were provided to you by your searcher.

At first some of the articles weren't as relevant, but with further discussion with the searcher, more articles were found of great importance.

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Part III – Searcher –

My searcher

Had a good attitude. - Agree

Was easy to reach. - Agree

Responded to communications in a timely manner. - Agree

Answered questions effectively. - Agree

Was helpful. - Agree

Please tell us what you liked/didn't like about your searcher.

My searcher was concise, very helpful, and very personable.

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Part IV – Comments –

How would you rate your experience overall?

Spectacular, best of the best for my situation

Excellent

Great

Good

Ok

Not so good

Poor

Abysmal, actually hindered my information seeking

Any other suggestions? What would you like done differently and why? What did you really like/dislike and why?

I can't think of anything that I would change. My searcher was a great help to me. She found articles that I never would have considered, and would have missed out on some vital information.

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Performance Survey: How did I do?

Below is a performance survey I put together to send to my Client. I felt that were I doing this professionally, it would be completely reasonable to want feedback on my performance as well as the information I provided.

I went to Survey Monkey, a free site that lets you design your own secure surveys.

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Performance Survey: How Did I do?

The Client was asked to answer several multiple choice and short answer questions.

Rating scale is as follows unless otherwise noted.

---------

Agree

Somewhat Agree

Neutral

Somewhat Disagree

Disagree

---------

Part I – Communication –

Communications with Searcher were

Timely.

Easy to understand.

Content appropriate in terms of my profession.

Please comment and tell us what you liked or didn't like about communications with your Searcher.

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Part II – Materials –

Materials provided by the Searcher

Were relevant.

Were accurate.

Were organized.

Were in a format I could easily read.

Met the quota requested by the Client.

Please tell use what you liked/didn't like about the materials that were provided to you by your searcher.

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Part III – Searcher –

My searcher

Had a good attitude

Was easy to reach

Responded to communications in a timely manner

Answered questions effectively

Was helpful

Please tell us what you liked/didn't like about your searcher

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Part IV – Comments –

How would you rate your experience overall?

Spectacular, best of the best for my situation

Excellent

Great

Good

Ok

Not so good

Poor

Abysmal, actually hindered my information seeking

Any other suggestions? What would you like done differently and why? What did you really like/dislike and why?

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Thoughts on My Clients E-mail Response to my Second Search Results

This second search was more successful then my first for several reasons. The more communication I have with my Client the better I understand her information needs. And feedback from the previous search helped me eliminate some search terms while adding new ones, like volcan (truncated to catch all variations of term volcano). Personally I gained new knowledge on the subject which, were I doing this professionally, would help me help Clients who come to me looking for this kind of the information in the future.

I was able to get articles of relevance to my client by the date she gave me. I learned though, that if a client says they need the articles by the 23, you should probably get them to them sooner so they have plenty of time to go over the material. Over all, the search was largely a success because my Client was able to use the articles I found for her to complete her project. And I helped to cut down her work where I could by providing her with proper citations of all the articles, abstracts and full text formats to skim and read in full.

Client's Response E-mail About Secondary Set of Sources

Below is my Client's e-mailed response to the second set of sources I provided.

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Hello Ms. Otto,

Thank you very much for the further results. The Payne and Kump
article was especially helpful, and with your help, I successfully
gave my presentation this past Thursday. The background reading you
helped me to find was essential to my understanding of the topic at
hand. Thank you very much!

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E-Mail to Client About Second Set of Sources

Below is a copy of the e-mail I sent to my client which included the sources I found in my second search:

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Hello,

I read your e-mail carefully and preformed several additional searches. From what you told me, articles involving volcanic activities, or molecular decomposition information may be of further interest to you. Some articles mention both biological and geological information, but you want to focus on geology. However, I chose not to discard any and all sources that mentioned biology. Instead I tried to choose articles that mentioned biology but with a focus on geological activities, consequences, and implications.

Below are the citations and abstracts from several articles I found. They are also attached to this e-mail as PDFs.

I hope these sources are more helpful,

Christine Otto

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