Social information access is defined as a stream of research that explores methods for organizing the past interactions of users in a community in order to provide future users with better access to information. Social information access covers a wide range of different technologies and strategies that operate on a different scale, which can range from a small closed corpus site to the whole Web. The 16 chapters included in this book provide a broad overview of modern research on social information access. In order to provide a balanced coverage, these chapters are organized by the main types of information access (i.e., social search, social navigation, and recommendation) and main sources of social information.

This volume summarizes the author’s work on social information seeking (SIS), and at the same time serves as an introduction to the topic. Sometimes also referred to as social search or social information retrieval, this is a relatively new area of study concerned with the seeking and acquiring of information from social spaces on the Internet. It involves studying situations, motivations, and methods involved in seeking and sharing of information in participatory online social sites, such as Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, and Twitter, as well as building systems for supporting such activities. The first part of the book introduces various foundational concepts, including information seeking, social media, and social networking. As such it provides the necessary basis to then discuss how those aspects could intertwine in different ways to create methods, tools, and opportunities for supporting and leveraging SIS. Next, Part II discusses the social dimension and primarily examines the online question-answering activity. Part III then emphasizes the collaborative aspect of information seeking, and examines what happens when social and collaborative dimensions are considered together. Lastly, Part IV provides a synthesis by consolidating methods, systems, and evaluation techniques related to social and collaborative information seeking. The book is completed by a list of challenges and opportunities for both theoretical and practical SIS work. The book is intended mainly for researchers and graduate students looking for an introduction to this new field, as well as developers and system designers interested in building interactive information retrieval systems or social/community-driven interfaces.

Information available through 'traditional' business and competitive resources can be complimented by information gained through social media tools. Social Information is a must-have book for competitive and business researchers in any discipline including librarians, information professionals, intelligence analysts, students and marketing personnel, and explores how more 'traditional' resources can be complimented by social media tools. The book outlines different categories of social tools, competitive and business applications of these tools, and provides example searches with screenshots. The book provides concrete search examples, as well as strategies and approaches for searching social tools that may be available today or that may emerge tomorrow. Readers will learn ways to quickly develop new search strategies as new tools and features emerge. The future of social tools and information, and the lasting impact that these tools have had on how information plays a part in our lives, our businesses and our careers is discussed. The title is structured into seven chapters, covering: the impact of social media, and the approach of the book; a brief history of business and competitive information and the rise of social tools; blogs and microblogs; video, audio and images; social search engines; and the future of social information. - The book specifically explores business and competitive information and approaches using social media tools - Written by a highly knowledgeable and long-time practitioner and researcher in the field - Provides both practical and strategic search approaches, so that the skills learned will be readily transferable to other social tools, and to social tools as they evolve

"This book provides a source for definitions, antecedents, and consequences of social informatics and the cultural aspect of technology. It addresses cultural/societal issues in social informatics technology and society, the Digital Divide, government and technology law, information security and privacy, cyber ethics, technology ethics, and the future of social informatics and technology"--Provided by publisher.

"Discusses information literacy and its social justice aspects, through a selection of chapters addressing the values of intellectual freedom, social responsibility, and democracy in relation to the sociopolitical context of library work"--Provided by publisher.

Nonconscious Social Information Processing presents a research program concerned with the processing of social information. It cannot be considered a typical social psychological research program, however, because it is not aimed at explaining any specific social psychological phenomena, nor are the cognitive processes studied specific to the processing of social information. The program explores complex or ""high level"" processing of information that is not mediated by conscious awareness, and social cognition seems to be an appropriate area in which to investigate this kind of processing. The research program began with observations which suggest that nonconscious acquisition and processing of information play a major role in human development and adjustment. The first two chapters discuss these observations and present preliminary theoretical assumptions. The subsequent chapters contain reports of 34 experiments on nonconscious information processing. The book is addressed not only to personality and social psychologists, but also to cognitive psychologists concerned with information processing in general. The former may find this research relevant because most of the experiments describe some mechanisms of acquisition and utilization of social information—problems they are working on themselves. The latter may want to ignore the specific stimulus material (i.e., social information) employed in most of the experiments and focus on the general nature of the cognitive mechanisms studied.

This book is showcases recent advances in knowledge discovery enhanced with semantic and social information. It includes eight chapters that grew out of joint workshops at ECML/PKDD 2007. The contributions emphasize the vision of the Web as a social medium.