Poster presenter "Threshold Concepts in Search Expertise"

This paper reports on a study of threshold concepts in the development of search expertise, concepts that transform the novice searcher’s perception and learning-to-search experience. Two groups of subjects were studied: highly experienced professional searchers and novice-student searchers who had exhibited expertlike behaviours in graduate coursework. Using these two groups allowed a nuanced understanding of the process of learning to search, with data from those who search at a very high level as well as those passing through a learning “portal” (Meyer and Land, 2003), en route to expertise.

In library and information science (LIS) research, search expertise has been much studied, spanning over 30 years of research from the literal, command-based interfaces of the 1970s to today’s sophisticated, web-based search engines designed for the greenest novice. This well-established foundation provided a solid research base upon which to study the existence of threshold concepts, add to our understanding of search expertise, and explore implications for enhancing the development of professional-level searching abilities in students.

Grounded theory provided a useful approach for eliciting evidence of threshold concepts. The study used semi-structured interviews and search tasks with think-aloud narratives and talk-after protocols. Searches were screen-captured simultaneous with audio-recording of the talk-aloud narrative during the search interaction. Themes that emerged from the study suggest three essential concepts in the experience of becoming an expert searcher; however, only one concept which fuses these three may be considered a threshold concept, having the characteristic of integration of these key understandings. The three concepts identified are information structures, information environment, and information vocabularies. The threshold concept that integrates these is termed “concept fusion” and may be similar in nature to the idea of a compounded threshold identified for electrical engineering (Flanagan et al, 2010). Implications for LIS curriculum are currently being explored as part of the larger research study.