Documenting and studying the use of assigned search tasks: RepAST

Abstract

The Repository of Assigned Search Tasks (RepAST) is a searchable repository created through a systematic review of the interactive information retrieval (IIR) research literature. It currently contains bibliographic details for approximately 750 articles, including empirical studies that employ assigned search tasks and a smaller number of conceptual papers on task-based searching. When available, the search task types, definitions and the task descriptions themselves are included. RepAST makes several contributions to the field. By bringing together examples of search task descriptions used in actual studies, RepAST provides a platform for studying practices within the research community and promoting greater conceptual clarity and consensus in the use of search tasks. To this end, the authors have published several studies based on analyses of the search tasks in the repository. In addition, researchers can use RepAST in a practical way, as a source of search task descriptions for reuse in new studies or in order to replicate prior research. In this interactive demo session, participants will have the opportunity to use the live RepAST system and provide feedback to the system designers.