My experience of seeking
information mostly comes from Biology and English classes. The most recent time
I have done research was for a Biology paper in which the subject was assigned.
I would argue that this means that the initiation stage was mostly cut off, but
I would agree that early in my lack of understanding there was uncertainty as
the author points out in "Information Search Process". Early in selection my thoughts were mostly uncertain as
well due to not fully understanding what keywords or search terms to
use. After I figured out what keywords to use selection was focused on trying
to find general articles to skim through and add to a list for myself to look
through again later. Exploration, as well as formulation, and collection were
very closely blended together. Although a case could be made that the initial skimming
over articles is included in exploration, I think that that more accurately
describes the beginning of my detailed search through the sources I found.
Initially in exploration, I felt calm as I looked through the data and chose references
from the examples that most closely matched the subject that I was assigned in the
initiation stage. As I moved through exploration and began to find conflicting
examples, or articles which were very different from what I thought they were
at first my confusion and stress grew greatly. After comparing many articles, I
was able to move onto formulation, where I could understand in greater detail
which sources pertained to my subject more accurately. After creating a ‘guiding
idea’ which in my example was relating the overall nutrition of bean plants to microbes in the soil, I was able to move onto the stage of collection rather quickly. At this
point I had enough of an idea of what my main focus would be, and research
moved smoothly from this point with an occasional hiccup. As I moved onto the
sixth stage ‘presentation’ I was able to quickly, and accurately select quotes and examples from the sources I picked out in the selection stage. This information would
then go on to be used in the main paper that I had worked on.
