The Invisible World of Intermediaries: A Cautionary Tale

Ehrlich, Kate; Cash, Debra

doi:10.1023/a:1008696415354

Cited by 52 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Most relevant to OTSL is the consideration of how to move from what the patron initially presents as her request to diagnosing the underlying need and so to the most appropriate kinds of help and information. The ethnographic work by Ehrlich and Cash (1999) links this setting back to methods and analysis more familiar to CSCW researchers.…”

Section: Theories Of Learning and Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Over the Shoulder Learning: Supporting Brief Informal Learning

Twidale

2005

Comput Supported Coop Work

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The paper reviews work on informal technical help giving between colleagues. It concentrates on the process of how colleagues help each other to use a computer application to achieve a specific work task, contrasting this with the focus of much prior work on surrounding issues like the choice of whom to ask, information re-use and the larger work context of encouragement or otherwise of such learning. By an analysis of the literature and a study of office activity, some strengths and weaknesses of the method are identified. The difficulties of talking about the process of performing graphical user interface actions are explored. Various design implications for functionalities to improve the efficiency of informal help giving are explored. A consideration of informal learning can help in designing more effective, learnable, robust and acceptable CSCW systems. It also provides a different perspective on interface design as an exploration of features to support human-human interaction, using the computer screen as a shared resource to support this. In this way CSCW research may contribute to HCI research, since during such help giving, all computer systems are at least temporarily collaborative applications.

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Section: Theories Of Learning and Interactionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Over the Shoulder Learning: Supporting Brief Informal Learning

Twidale

2005

Comput Supported Coop Work

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“…Since clin icians are costly, on call, and prefer clin ical tasks to administrative ones, medical secretaries' care of records should continue to be in demand. The roles of clerical staff as intermediaries, information gatekeepers, and articulation workers should not be underestimated [17]. As studies have revealed, clerical work is rarely mere routine, but requires knowledge and skill.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical secretaries' care of records

Bossen

Jensen

Witt

2012

Proceedings of the ACM 2012 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work

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We describe the cooperative work of med ical secretaries at two hospital departments, during the implementation of an electronic health record system. Medical secretaries' core task is to take care of patient records by ensuring that informat ion is comp lete, up to date, and correctly coded. Medical secretaries also do informat ion gatekeeping and articulation work. The EHR implementation stressed their importance to the departments' work arrangements, coupled their work more t ightly to that of other staff, and led to task drift among professions. While medical secretaries have been relatively invisible to health informatics and CSCW, this case study identifies their importance, and suggests that they and other non-clinical groups should be considered, when developing health care IT. We propose the term 'boundary-object trimming', to conceptualize their contributions to hospitals' cooperative work arrangements.

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“…You know the burden is on me to define what it is that I am looking for and if I give [the librarian] the right words." Ehrlich and Cash (1999) noted that many complex aspects of reference work can be invisible to users, from helping users formulate their questions to diagnosing the "fundamental, underlying" (p. 151) problems misunderstood and misdiagnosed by questioners, drawing on domain knowledge and search expertise, validating the information quality of search results, and selecting, aggregating, and annotating results. The users and managers who benefit the most from librarians' reference work may not even be aware that these skilled efforts occur.…”

Section: The Costs Of Privacymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Death of the Anonymous Librarian

Mon

Harris²

2011

The Reference Librarian

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Privacy and anonymity in the profession of librarianship was one of the themes emerging from the Internet Public Library (ipl2) institute in March 2010, questioning whether new trends in librarianship are leading to the demise of the "anonymous librarian." This article examines the research literature on how privacy and anonymity issues can affect users and librarians. The rise of new initiatives such as embedded librarians, on-site liaison librarians, and personal librarians appears to be a shift toward increasing professional visibility and away from anonymity in professional practice.

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The Invisible World of Intermediaries: A Cautionary Tale

Cited by 52 publications

References 9 publications

Over the Shoulder Learning: Supporting Brief Informal Learning

Over the Shoulder Learning: Supporting Brief Informal Learning

Medical secretaries' care of records

The Death of the Anonymous Librarian

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