Running head: INFORMATION NEED: SEARCHING FOR VACATION CABINS

Information Need: Searching for Vacation Cabins

Sara Linden

Emporia State University

INFORMATION NEED: SEARCHING FOR VACATION CABINS 2

Searching for Vacation Cabins

Introduction

I interviewed a close friend of mine. We decided upon a pseudonym for the interviewee,

Veronica Snow. The interview took place on November 13, 2009 with a follow-up interview on

December 3, 2009. In this diagnostic interview, my goals were to identify the interviewee’s

cognitive learning style, understand her information need, map her information search, compare

her search process to a known search process model, and identify areas of improvement in the

interviewee’s process.

Background

On weekends and breaks during the winter, my interviewee, Veronica Snow, enjoys

snowboarding. Growing up, she split her time between Santa Barbara, CA and Seattle, WA. She

is a white, rather privileged American twenty-something, currently living in Berkeley, CA. When

she has an opportunity, she heads to places near her, like Lake Tahoe, to snowboard. A friend of

Veronica’s taught her to snowboard several years ago, when she lived near the Italian Alps.

Veronica graduated from the University of California-Berkeley a few years ago with her BA in

Psychology. She has been working at a research lab since graduation and plans to begin applying

to doctoral programs next year. While attending UC Berkeley, she worked on campus at Doe

Library in the Interlibrary Loan department.

Veronica has a fairly high level of experience doing information searches and utilizing

search systems. By her own admission, she has been using search engines, the internet and other

search tools since eighth grade, if not earlier. Her knowledge of successful information seeking is

in a constant state of evolution due to the honing of her skills through general life interests, as
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well as from practice during school and work. In the author’s opinion, Veronica’s Myers-Briggs

cognitive style is ESTJ--a Dominant Extroverted thinker (Reinhold & Poirier, 2009). ESTJs

“love a challenge, especially one that will allow tangible improvement” and “[t]hey are quick

to…find resources” (Poirier, n.d.) Other descriptions of her cognitive style might include

“Assimilating” and “Interpersonally Intelligent” (Kolb and Gardener’s models, respectively)

(Thomas, 2004). Since her knowledge of the particular subject area was lacking, she had a need

to fill the gap, so she began her search.

Interviewee’s Information Search

Veronica’s enjoyment of snowboarding is high, so she has a season pass to a particular

resort. As stated above, on her time off, such as during weekends, she likes to spend a few days

snowboarding when she can. However, driving back and forth from the ski resort to her home in

one day takes too much time. Additionally, she doesn’t know anyone near the resort, so her

options for where she stays when she goes to the resort are limited. While she was a student at

Berkeley, she was a member of the Snowboarding Club. The club had a cabin in which they

would stay when groups of them would go up to snowboard together. Since her graduation,

occasionally she would go to the mountains with a male friend of hers, and they would stay at his

lodging, but they no longer travel to the resort with one another (personal communication,

November 13, 2009). So Veronica had, for some time now, wanted to locate a place that she

could stay that was close to the snowboarding area so she could utilize her season pass as much

as she could.

Veronica began searching about a week and a half before the diagnostic interview took

place. First, she considered staying at a hotel, but she had heard about something called “cabin

sharing” and had been intrigued. Veronica had heard that the cabin share option was more
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economical. She decided to ask others for their advice. When asked how she determined who

would make for a good advisor on the topic, she replied that she asked people she knew that

already had cabins in the area she had chosen. Her goal at this point was just to find out more

general information about cabin sharing, and she succeeded. She found, by speaking with others

with experience in cabin sharing, that it was indeed more economical than staying at a hotel by a

resort (personal communication, November 13, 2009).

After interviewing acquaintances about their personal experiences with cabin sharing, she

decided to do a Google search, because she was comfortable utilizing this search engine and she

felt that it would help her get a general sense of direction. At this point she was getting anxious,

she reported, because she knew she was getting in a time crunch and needed to find something

before the season got going. She searched by entering the name of her desired area, followed by

the words “cabin share”. Unfortunately, she did not find any good matches by searching in this

way. Again, Veronica turned to a friend for advice. The friend recommended a Craigslist search.

Veronica was familiar with using Craigslist, so she attempted several Craigslist searches, but was

unable to find many “hits” based on her search methods (personal communication, November

13, 2009). Veronica was not assisted by any kind of search professional. Veronica was left

feeling frustrated, but continued to believe she would find a housing method that worked for her.

Comparison of Search Process to Models Presented in Class

Carol Kuhlthau’s Information Search Process model can be applied to this diagnostic

interviewee’s experience. In Veronica’s first stage, initiation, Veronica realized she had an

information need—“where would she stay during snowboarding season now that she was no

longer traveling to the mountains with other people regularly?” She thought about the problem
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and felt uncertain about the solution. Next, during the selection stage, she realized she needed to

find a place to stay, but what type of place would work best for her? At this point she speaks

with others who she feels can guide her towards a path to find a solution. Then, during

exploration, Veronica realizes that she is under a time crunch and feels stressed. At this point,

she enters the formulation stage, when she selects the option of a cabin share as the best choice

for her to pursue. Next, she enters the collection stage and searches Google and Craigslist for

specifics on cabin sharing options. Unfortunately, the stage of presentation is met with

disappointment as her search doesn’t end well.

Possible Improvements of the Search Process

There are several ways in which Veronica could have improved her search process. First,

she could have spent more time searching or could have started earlier so she wasn’t in as much

of a time crunch. Also, she could have searched more broadly. For example, she could have

called the resort for recommendations or she could have checked bulletin boards at the resorts to

see if anyone had any advertisements posted. She also could have contacted Berkeley’s

Snowboarding Club to see if they had any recommendations. I would have advised her to

broaden her search further than she did. Of course, one does what one must when they have a

limited amount of time to search for information.

In situations such as these, this is where the information service professional would come

into play and be a very useful helper. An information professional could have either suggested

areas for Veronica to look into or depending upon the services provided by the professional, the

professional could have done the searching for Veronica, effectively saving Veronica time and

gathering relevant results for her. A service provider could have also helped connect Veronica
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with additional sources of reference ranging from magazines, websites, personal anecdotes, and

so forth.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, Veronica never found enough information for her to find a cabin share

like she had hoped. She seemed positive, however, about her results, most likely because as long

as Veronica is able to snowboard, the housing situation is “just gravy”. Her end result was that

she had made some “buddy possibilities to share gas and lodging costs” (personal

communication, December 3, 2009). Utilizing an information service provider, starting her

search earlier, and widening her sources of information may have helped Veronica have a more

satisfying and productive search experience.

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References

Kuhlthau, C. C. (n.d.) Information Search Process. Retrieved from

http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~kuhlthau/information_search_process.htm

Poirier, D. (n.d.). Dominated Extroverted Thinking: ENTJ & ESTJ what is it like? Retrieved
from http://www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory2.html

Reinhold, R., & Poirier, D. (2009). Myers Briggs Personality Types, Your Best Fit Type, and an
introduction to the 16 Personality Types - Part 1. Retrieved from
http://www.personalitypathways.com/dom-te.html

Thomas, N. P. (2004). Information Literacy and Information Skills Instruction: Applying

research to practice in the school library media center (2nd ed.). Westport, CT:
Greenwood.