Relationships between work task types, complexity and dwell time of information resources

Abstract

Information seeking research often reports about types of information resources, ways of acquiring them and opinions on their importance in various professions. Based on self-reporting, these findings are affected by human memory and rationalisation. This article proposes a new way of studying information resource use – based on dwell time in the context provided by concrete work tasks. We use log data of 21 information workers from six organisations to analyse how work task complexity is connected to the time used in various information resources; how task complexity is connected to information resource use in different task types. Unlike traditionally, our findings consist of objective data on which resource types are used, and for how long, in work tasks of varying complexity and type. For example, the findings suggest that growing work task complexity increases the dwell time in local personal computer (PC) resources; these resources are especially popular in intellectual tasks. Such findings help understand factors affecting information resource use. Likewise, they help focus attention on most time-consuming aspects of task-based information interaction when developing support for work.