3rd international workshop on collaborative information retrieval (CIR2011).

Synchronous, explicit search has some interesting characteristics that distinguish it from other types of interaction: there is much more emphasis on interaction, as the system has to not only communicate search results to the user, but also mediate some forms of communication and data sharing among its users. There are new algorithms that need to be invented that use inputs from multiple people to produce search results, and new evaluation metrics need to be invented that reflect the collaborative and interactive nature of the task. Finally, we need to integrate the expertise of library and information science researchers and practitioners by revisiting real-world information seeking situations with an eye for explicit, synchronous collaborative search.