Annotated bibliography

After severe bouts of writer's block I have finally managed to start the assignment. I have found that my information retrieval skills have improved markedly. My Boolean and Advanced searches of the academic data bases produced, what appeared to be from the abstracts and search terms, some excellent articles. However, careful reading of the context statement showed that they were not really applicable. I had to start again. The range of magazines in the library e-journal section is incredible.

My second problem was the realization that I was not writing on the information I had gleaned but on my own ideas. This was very different from most other exercises I had done in the distant past in my Science and Education studies. The whole thing has been a very steep learning curve.

Blackwell, A.F. & Green, T.R.G. (1999). Investment of Attention as an Analytic Approach to Cognitive Dimensions. Retrieved April 24, 2009, from http://www.citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/

This article discusses the scarcity of (and hence value of) attention in all forms of computer usage, both from programmer and user perspectives. It defines the "attentional locus" of each type of task in terms of the user's perceived "estimated potential value, estimated cost and estimated risk". The explanations are detailed but simple to understand.

The authors are academics based in the Universities of Cambridge and Leeds respectively. They are leaders in this research and their many articles are cited in many peer review publications.

The concepts, while not specifically discussing metadata searching, provided an excellent background for my discussion of the user attention problems when searching the web.

Organizing and Evaluating Search Information

Search

I have no idea why Blogger puts a large gap between this and the table below. I realise it is a wysiwyg editor but it is a pain when you need to add formatting.

In searching for academic articles on the Attention Economy:

Search Terms	Hits in Google	Hits in Google Scholar
attention + economy +(university or college)	226,000,000	1120
"attention economy" +(university or college)	60,600	815

Organising the search task

URL1: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=FuuKd3on9psC&dq=attention+economy+user+OR+web&lr=&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

Author: Blackwell, T & Beck, J.

Title: The Action Economy

Institution: Published by Harvard Business Press

Blurb: Helps individuals and organizations understand how to effectively give and get attention, one of the biggest commodities--and scarcest-- in the new economy.(Blackwell, 2001)

URL2: http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&hs=zja&q=author:%22Blackwell%22+intitle:%22Investment+of+attention+as+an+analytic+approach+to+...%22+&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholarr

Author: Blackwell, T & & Green, T.R.G.

Title: Investment of Attention as an Analytic Approach to Cognitive Dimensions

Institution: Universities of Cambridge and Leeds

Blurb: Looks at the interaction of humans and computers and structures this in terms of:

• an estimated potential value


• an estimated cost


• an estimated risk

(Blackwell, 1999) and defines these in terms of user activities.

URL3: http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&hs=zja&q=author:%22Blackwell%22+intitle:%22Investment+of+attention+as+an+analytic+approach+to+...%22+&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholarr

Author:Nachmias, R & Segev, L

Title: Usage of Content in Web-supported Academic Courses

Institution: Tel-Aviv University, School of Education

Blurb: Looks at the design of on-line university courses and presents their findings and suggestions on the efficiency of student usage.

My methods of storing this information

Although I investigated the tools suggested I found that I did not have time to master them before commencing the current task. I updated and re-organised my Google Bookmark site to include detailed folders for Curtin > NET11 > Assignment > Attention Economy. I stored the most relevant articles in similar folders in Microsoft Word and then printed them for easier reading and noting.