Name collection by Ph.D. history students: Inducing expertise

This article reports a study of 45 Ph.D. history students and the effect of a technique of information seeking on their role as experts in training. I t is assumed that the primary task of these students is to prove in their t hesis that they have crossed over the line separating novice and expert, wh ich they do by producing a thesis that makes both a substantial and origina l contribution to knowledge. Their information-seeking behavior, therefore, is a function of this primary task. It was observed that many of the Ph.D. students collected "names" of people, places, and things and assembled dat a about these names on 3 x 5 inch index cards. The "names" were used as acc ess points to the primary and secondary source material they had to read fo r their thesis. Besides using name collection as an information accessing t echnique, the larger importance of collecting "names" is what it does for t he Ph.D. student in terms of their primary task (to produce a thesis that p roves they have become experts in their field). The article's thesis is tha t by inducing certain characteristics of expert thinking, the name collecti on technique's primary purpose is to push the student across the line into expert thinking.