ABSTRACT
Information scattering is an often observed phenomenon related to information collections where there are a few sources that have many items of relevant information about a topic, while most sources have only a few. This entry discusses the original discovery of the phenomenon, the types of information scattering observed across many different information collections, methods that have been used to analyze the phenomenon, explanations for why and how information scattering occurs, and how these results have informed the design of systems and search strategies. The entry concludes with future challenges related to building computational models to more precisely describe the process of information scatter, and algorithms which help users to gather highly scattered information.
