ASSISTANCE

Provide interactive help.*

The number of information systems we encounter in our "Knowledge Worker" lives is steadily increasing. Even for the people who deal with vasts amounts of information on a daily basis, the ability to understand and make sense of all these new information systems is dubious.

"... there will always be the people who still need help."

Consequently, even if your information system exemplifies the best of readability, browsability, and searchability, there will always be the people who still need help. Even the people who believe they can use the system(s) to their fullest potential may sometimes need assistance to achieve the highest ratio of precision to recall from their information gathering sessions. This is why the biggest and largest of information systems will require some sort of interactive assistance built into them.

This is nothing new. Libraries, huge information systems, have always had librarians. Shopping malls have "information desks." Even though you have a telephone book for your local area, how many times have you dialed directory assistance because the book was out-of-date?

The larges of information systems will require some sort of extra, interactive assistance in order for their services to be most effective. This interactive assistance could simply be a person at the other end of a telephone or an Internet Relay Chat. It could be an "expert system." In either case, there will need to be some sort of procedure where you can ask questions and/or the system can ask question of you. Based on the answers, other questions would be asked. At the end of the question-and-answer process some sort of game plan or alternative method for using the information system would be provided.

Interactive assistance can be proactive or reactive. Proactive interactive assistance queries users for the information needs. It analyses the answers to the queries and either formulates possible solutions to the information need or continues the query process. A reactive assistance model would only provide possible solutions after being asked questions by the users. The difference between these two models is similar to the difference between browsability and searchability. Both browsability and proactive assistance layout ready-made solutions or information paths. Searchability and reactive assistance require the users to articulate their needs and translate them into language of the system. Like browsability and searchability, ideally, elements of both proactive and reactive assistance are desirable in the implementation of any large, automated information system.

With the advent of the Internet, providing interactive assistance manifested itself through the use of e-mail. This has almost become a ubiquitous means for providing reference. Another, more innovative solution, was the creation of MOOs and MUDs. These text-based, virtual realities were populated by people with common needs and desires. MOOs and MUDs always seemed popular with the gaming crowd, but because of its text-based orientation it never seemed to cause very much of a stir.

The big thing these days is the World Wide Web. Everybody's individual WWW server represents an information system and the larger they get the more they necessitate interactive assistance to make them more useful. The first hints of interactive assistance efforts include relevance ranking and meta-search engines. While these applications hint at interactive assistance, they have a way to go before they provide anything remotely like "proactive" assistance.

Ask Alcuin, proto-typed by myself in 1995, is a Perl script whose purpose is to put into practice the concept of interactive assistance. Using a question-and-answer process similar to a reference interview, Ask Alcuin tries to identify a user's information need and translate that need into the query language of remote and local databases. The program is functional in that it executes correctly, but the method it uses convert information needs into queries needs to be updated and refined. Enhancements could include the log of user needs so repeat users do not have to re-build a profile with the application. Furthermore, the program needs to be updated in terms of the search engines it queries and how it queries them.

Meta-search engines are those Internet applications allowing you to input queries into a field, select various databases, and submit your query. The main strength of these applications is their ability to translate your query into something many databases understand. Examples include SavvySearch, All4one, Cyber411, Inference Find!, and MetaFind. These applications all work with varying degrees of success. The better ones collate the results, remove the duplicates, and list the results is some sort of order. None of these engines help you refine your queries.

In summary, if librarians want to participate in providing information services electronically, then librarians must create useful electronic information systems. These systems, depending on their size, ought to exemplify varying degrees of readability, browsability, searchability, and interactive assistance. Interactive assistance, as specialized help for specialized situations, can take many forms: telephone conversations, video conferencing, or expert systems. The implementation of these electronic services will be a challenge for the profession, especially considering the current "do more with less" mind set, but with perseverance and determination we can make it happen.

This last element of Web page design is the most difficult to implement and quite possibly the most controversial, yet this element has always existed in previous information systems. Why not information systems on the Internet?

* This section borrows heavily from Eric Lease Morgan, "Creating User-Friendly Electronic Information Systems." Computers in Libraries v17n8 (September 1997) pgs. 31-32.