Elicitations study during 40 mediated information retrieval (IR) interactions identified 1557 search intermediary elicitations within 15 purpose categories (requests for information on search terms and strategies, database selection, search procedures, system's outputs and relevance of retrieved items, and users' knowledge and previous information-seeking). Discusses related studies, research questions/design, results, information-retrieval elicitation task model, and implications for IR system design. (PEN)