The role of historical and contextual knowledge in enterprise search
ISSN: 0022-0418
Article publication date: 20 December 2021
Issue publication date: 9 August 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the study is to examine enterprise searching practices across different work areas and work tasks in an enterprise search system in an international biotechnology company.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed-method approach studying employees' authentic search activities during a 4-month period by log data, questionnaire survey and interviews. The log data analysed the entire active searcher group, whereas the questionnaire and interviews focused on frequent searchers.
Findings
The three studies provided insight into the searching activities and an understanding of the way searchers used the enterprise search system to search for information as part of their work tasks. The data identified three searcher groups, each with specific search characteristics. Four work task types were identified, and for all four types the searchers applied a tracing searching technique with use of contextual and historical relationships as paths.
Practical implications
The findings point to the importance of knowledge on historical and contextual relations in enterprise search.
Originality/value
The work sheds new light on enterprise searchers' information search practices. A significant contribution is the identification of a tracing search method used in relation to four essential work task types. Another contribution is the importance of historical and contextual knowledge to support the tracing search and decide what paths to follow.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the company for the generous opportunity to conduct this research and the participants for their engagement and valuable insights on this topic. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions in developing the paper further.
Citation
Lykke, M., Bygholm, A., Søndergaard, L.B. and Byström, K. (2022), "The role of historical and contextual knowledge in enterprise search", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 78 No. 5, pp. 1053-1074. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2021-0170
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited