Thinking with images: An exploration into information retrieval and knowledge generation

This paper reports a study of a social scientist's use of images in her research. Analysis of the verbs she used to describe her work identified three functions that images fill, those of tool for thinking, carrier of information, and memory system. Different functions were important at different stages of the research. The scholar's searches for images are also described. The paper makes the argument that, although research on information retrieval has generally ended the consideration of the interaction between document and user at the point where the text is found and judged to be relevant or not, this separation of retrieval from use circumscribes understanding of both.