Experiences of Serendipity in Digital Environments
Expanding the findings of the previous two articles, Article Three investigates the features of digital tools that historians feel support serendipity in their research. Using both the findings from the survey in Article Two and the interview data in Article One as background material, this study provides an in-depth examination of the digitalenvironments that historians are using to facilitate serendipity in their research. The resulting list of recommendations will assist librarians, LIS scholars, and historians themselves in understanding how these scholars are making connections that result in positive outcomes at various points in their research process.
1.5.1
Randomness versus Serendipity
One motivation for the development of tools aimed at enhancing serendipity in digital environments comes from the need to redesign and recreate the complexity of the research environment found in library stacks and archival collections. It is often argued that this complexity may be lost in digital environments, which are highly predictable and primarily based on keyword search (Martin & Quan-Haase, 2013). The extent to which
serendipity is altered in digital search is debatable. Nonetheless, this perception of loss directly affects how scholars, and in particular humanities scholars, adopt and use digital tools. Martin and Quan-Haase (2013) found that historians are skeptical of conducting their research exclusively in digital environments because they lack the ability to encounter key resources (primary and secondary materials) that could have a major impact on their research findings. In this study, the authors also found that historians were willing to experiment with digital tools, if these could recreate opportunities for “accidentally” encountering information. Hence, scholars perceive the discovery of resources, browsing, and chance encountering as central elements of their research practice that can, and need to, be supported online.
Outside of academia, a number of tools have emerged that try to introduce serendipity into the online experience. What is less clear from the literature is how to best support this process, as a wide range of approaches have been suggested ranging from
interactions in social media (Bogers & Björneborn, 2013), exploration in non-search related digital environments (Rubin et al., 2011), and information search in digital environments (Makri, Bhuiya, Carthy, & Owusu-Bonsu, 2015). The approach most commonly taken is to introduce serendipity into the online information-seeking
experience; this is often done by introducing some element of randomness to the search algorithm and thereby reducing the predictability of search results. An example of this approach is BananaSlug, which returns random results to a search query. Other
approaches include reversing or modifying the ranking in which search results are presented online (e.g., Jansen, Spink, & Saracevic, 2000). This would draw attention to a different set of items because users commonly tend to investigate only the first and perhaps second pages of search results. All of these approaches aim at “broadening the search space, promoting encounters with items that might not, under existing algorithms, be identified” by the user (Burkell, Quan-Haase, & Rubin, 2012). While the majority of digital tools aimed at supporting serendipity have emerged outside of the humanities, a series of tools have recently been developed with humanists in mind (CHMN, 2013; Sherratt, 2013). These tools have garnered considerable attention in the field, but it remains unclear which elements of serendipity they support. Part of the problem is that the concept of serendipity is elusive (Merton, 2004) and it experiences are difficult to
pinpoint. Reducing serendipity to the introduction of randomness, however, does not seem to be the most productive way to move forward, though it is the one most commonly utilized. A second problem, and perhaps more concerning, is that scholars need to first understand that serendipity is not a one-dimensional concept but, rather, includes a number of related facets, all of which need to inform tool design and implementation.
1.5.2
Research Questions
The following research questions are answered through an analysis of the survey results and an investigation into the tools that historians are using throughout their research.
1. How comfortable are historians in digital environments and what digital environments are historians using to encourage serendipity in their research?
2. How often do historians claim to experience serendipity in these digital environments?
3. Which features of these digital environments do historians feel support serendipity?
1.5.3
Methodology
Section C of the survey on Historians and Serendipity, which looks specifically at serendipity in digital environments, will be used to answer the RQs above. This survey data aids in the examination of the features of specific digital environments that align with the serendipitous experience in the historical research process.
The online survey was developed using Qualtrics, an online data collection system available at The University of Western Ontario. Section C consisted of a series of questions about the location, frequency, and timing of serendipitous experiences within the research process. This section provides both quantitative data from Likert scale questions regarding the frequency of serendipitous experiences, and qualitative data where the participants are asked to recall and describe their experiences within digital information environments. See Appendix B for the full survey.
To determine the frequency and specificity of serendipity within these digital
environments, this study will incorporate McCay-Peet’s (2013) questionnaires for the Direct Measure of Serendipity in Digital Environments. These serendipity questionnaires have been analyzed and tested in multiple studies, and will be a good measure for
historians’ experiences of serendipity (McCay-Peet, 2013b). Questions in this section included:
Q1. Please list up to 3 digital environments where you have experienced serendipity.
Q2. Questionnaire for the Direct Measure of Serendipity in a Specific Digital Environment
Q3. Can you describe the features of this specific digital environment that you find to be most conducive to the serendipitous encounter?
Q4. Questionnaire for the Direct Measure of Serendipity in Digital Environments Q5. Can you describe the features of digital environments that you find to be most
conducive to the serendipitous encounter?
Q6. Questionnaire for the Direct Measure of Serendipity in General
The first questionnaire asked about the historians’ experiences of serendipity in the specific digital environment that they selected as their first choice in Q1. The historians were asked to describe the features of this tool that they found supported serendipity, before going on to answer the same set of questions about digital environments in general (Figure 4). To gauge what their experiences with serendipity are outside of the digital environment, we also asked these historians to answer the questionnaire when thinking about their experiences in serendipity in general. The quantitative answers provided by these questionnaires are supplemented with the qualitative descriptions of the features they find support serendipity, which were coded and sorted into categories defined by the type of digital environment they described.
Figure 4 Questionnaire for the Direct Measure of Serendipity in Digital Environments
(McCay-Peet, 2013)