What if they build it and no one comes? Balancing full-text access and user tasks

Kuhlthau (2005) highlighted the chasm separating the investigation of information-seeking behaviors and the design of information retrieval systems and proposed that its continued existence prohibited any effective resolution of information seeking problems. Consequently she argued that only by enhancing collaboration among researchers engaged in these two areas, continuing investigations beyond the first round of findings, and using findings to design systems for evaluation can research in library and information science proceed meaningfully and effectively. This paper will discuss the task analysis findings from the research project Folktales and Facets that seeks to address this chasm. As part of the content analytical approach taken in this project, the researchers conducted task analysis on transcripts from interviews with 12 subjects who rely on folk narratives in their professional lives as storytellers (n = 6) scholars or instructors (n = 4), or librarians (n = 2). These findings will be mapped to the FRBR user tasks and placed in the greater context of user-focused studies that seek to do the same.