CONFERENCE REPORT

Second International Symposium on Information Interaction in Context

1Mounia Lalmas

Anastasios Tombros

Pia Borlund

Jesper W. Schneider

University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK

Queen Mary University of London
London, UKRoyal School of LIS
Aalborg, Denmark

Royal School of LIS
Aalborg, Denmarkmounia@dcs.gla.ac.uk

tassos@dcs.qmul.ac.uk

pb@db.dk

jws@db.dk

Introduction

The second International Symposium on Information Interaction in Context (IIiX’08) was held at theLondon office of the British Computer Society (BCS), London, UK on 14-17 October 2008. IIiX’08succeeded the first symposium held in Copenhagen in 2006.
The primary objective of IIiX is to investigate how the concept of context can be understood andexploited to make information systems truly interactive. Knowledge about context can be usedeffectively to constrain retrieval and seeking of information and to understand ensuing information
behaviours including relevance and use, thereby reducing the complexity of the interaction processes. Asin the case of the first IIiX symposium, the aim of IIiX’08 was to bring together researchers from therelated areas of information seeking behaviour, laboratory IR, and interactive IR to provide a forum fordiscussion and collaboration on context issues with respect to information seeking and retrieval. Thiswas successfully achieved in IIiX 2008, as a variety of angles to the concept of context, as well assuggestions as to how to consider and treat context in information seeking and retrieval, were presented.
IIiX’08 attracted over 90 participants from 5 continents and 15 countries. The conference organisation(both the social and scientific programs) was planned with the aim of creating an informal atmospherethat encouraged interaction and discussion in every opportunity. The mix of participants (younger andmore senior researchers, doctoral students) also contributed to a relaxed, informal atmosphere conducive
to highly enjoyable social and scientific interaction.

2Conference Organisation and Content

The proceedings of the conference are published by the ACM Digital Library, as part of the ACM
International Conference Proceedings Series. In the following section we summarise the main
components of the conference.

2.1 Keynote presentations
IIiX’08 included two keynote presentations from senior researchers. The conference was opened by akeynote presentation given by Stephen Robertson (Microsoft Research, UK) entitled: “The study ofinformation retrieval - a long view”. In his presentation, Prof. Robertson outlined the opposition
between, on the one hand, experiments conducted in a laboratory setting, and on the other, studies inmore naturalistic settings with people and real information needs, and proceeded to a discussion of thecompromises that are made in pursuit of scientific validity and reliability in these settings.

The second keynote presentation was given by Ian Ruthven (University of Strathclyde, UK), with thetitle: “The context of the interface”. Dr. Ruthven’s keynote examined existing search interfaces tohighlight how the nature of information retrieval interfaces has changed in response to research fromcontextual information seeking and retrieval, with a particular emphasis on the commercial nature of
web search interfaces.

2.2 Research papers
IIiX 2008 received 54 paper submissions from 19 countries (four continents) and accepted 18 full and 5
research in progress papers. Submissions were received in accordance with the overall theme of theconference, which (similar to IIiX’06) was organised within three main research areas that contribute toour understanding of interactive information seeking and retrieval: Information Behaviour, Laboratory
IR, and Interactive IR. Each of these areas had its own Thematic Programme Chair responsible formanaging the review process: Information Behaviour (chaired by John Feather, University ofLoughborough, UK), Laboratory IR (chaired by Arjen de Vries, CWI, Netherlands) and Interactive IR(chaired by Diane Kelly, University of North Carolina, USA). Jesper W. Schneider and Pia Borlund asProgram Chairs had the overall management of the reviewer selection and assignment process.
The accepted contributions were thematically divided into sessions that covered the broad areas oninteractive IR, context retrieval methods, personalisation, evaluation and relevance, museums andarchives in context, and information seeking. Within these sessions, the individual contributions reported
work in areas as diverse as image and music retrieval, bioinformatics, context-aware mobile
applications, and children’s information seeking behaviour.
The best paper award for IIiX’08 was given to Hideo Joho, Joemon Jose and David Hannah from theUniversity of Glasgow for the paper “Comparing collaborative and independent search in a recalloriented task”. The award was sponsored by Yahoo! Research. The decision for the award was taken by
a committee consisting of Monica Landoni from the University of Lugano in Switzerland, Nils Pharofrom Oslo University College in Norway and Ian Ruthven from the University of Strathclyde in the UK.
The committee was chaired by Anastasios Tombros.

2.3 Panel Discussion
As in the first IIiX conference in 2006, a lively panel discussion was part of the program. The title of thepanel was Information Interaction: Problems & Challenges, and was organised by Peter Ingwersen fromthe Royal School of Library and Information Studies, Denmark. The five panellists (Nick Belkin fromRutgers University, Ayşe Göker from City University London, Diane Kelly from the University ofNorth Carolina, Steve Robertson from Microsoft Research Cambridge, and Ian Ruthven from theUniversity of Strathclyde) addressed a number of questions on current problems and near-futurechallenges concerned with theoretical and methodological, as well as application issues, of informationinteraction. The questions were distributed to the panellists in advance in order to prepare theirresponses. The session had a highly interactive nature with a number of very interesting questions andobservations from the audience. Overall, the panel session contributed to a thought provoking, relaxing
and informal atmosphere.

2.4 Doctoral forum
A doctoral forum was organised as part of IIiX’08. The forum was a one-day event, taking place the day
before the start of the main conference. The doctoral forum was an invitation to doctoral students topresent their research projects, and in return receive constructive feedback. The primary objective of theforum was therefore to provide doctoral students with a forum to present and discuss their research

projects with senior researchers and fellow students and to develop their relationships with otherscientists.
The forum was chaired by Erica Cosijn from the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and Ross
Wilkinson from CSIRO, Australia. Participating students were selected by the forum chairs based on ashort paper describing their doctoral research project and their motivation for participating in the forum
as well as the stage of their projects. In total 14 applications were accepted, representing a broad rangeof research perspectives. Seven senior researchers experienced in one or more of the IIiX symposium
themes gave feedback to the students and discussed their projects with them, based on their papers andpresentations at the forum. The senior researchers were: Katriina Bystrom (Swedish School of Libraryand Information Science, Sweden), Theresa Dirndorfer-Anderson (University of Technology, Sydney,Australia), Ayşe Göker (City University, UK), Joemon Jose (University of Glasgow, UK), Diane Kelly(University of North Carolina, US), Andrew MacFarlane (City University, UK), Daniella Petrelli(University of Sheffield, UK).

2.5 Tutorials
The day before the start of the main conference also included two half-day tutorials. The selection of thetutorials was organized by the two chairs, Eero Sormunen from the University of Tampere in Finland,and Peter Ingwersen from the Royal School of Library and Information Studies in Denmark. The firsttutorial by Ayşe Göker and her colleagues from City University London and AmbieSense, focused on
information interaction in mobile environments. The second tutorial by Peter Ingwersen proposed anddemonstrated a research framework for semi-controlled field studies in interactive IR. Tutorials wereincluded in the program of IIiX for the first time this year.

2.6 Workshops
Three workshops were also held in conjunction with IIiX’08 on the day after the main conference. Theworkshops were:

3•Teaching and Learning of IR. Organisers: Andrew MacFarlane (City University London), JuanF. Huete and Juan M. Fernández-Luna (Universidad de Granada), Efthimis N. Efthimiadis(University of Washington). http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~andym/TLIR08/•

Corpus Profiling for Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing. Organisers: AnneDe Roeck (The Open University), Dawei Song (Robert Gordon University), Udo Kruschwitz(University of Essex). http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/corpus-profiling/index.php•

Adaptive Information Retrieval. Organisers: Joemon M. Jose, C. J. van Rijsbergen, Hideo Joho
(University of Glasgow). http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/workshops/air2008/index.html

Sponsors and Acknowledgements

The organisers wish to thank the IIiX’08 sponsoring organisations: The Information Retrieval Facility(IRF), Yahoo! Research, and the British Computer Society’s Information Retrieval Specialist Group(BCS-IRSG).
The organisers would also like to thank Leif Azzopardi from the University of Glasgow for all his help
with the local organisation, the staff of the British Computer Society for ensuring the smoothorganisation of the venue, the publicity chair Birger Larsen from the Royal School of Library andInformation Science in Denmark, Murat Yakici from the University of Glasgow for acting as webmasterand Zoltan Szlavik from Queen Mary University of London for his services as student volunteer.

4The IIiX Symposium in 2010

The next in the series of the IIiX conferences, will be organised by Professor Nick Belkin, Rutgers
University, USA and will be held in New Jersey, USA in 2010 (probably in August 2010).