INLS 180 Human Information Interactions

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INLS 180 Human Information Interactions

• Session 14. Review I

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What weve covered so far

• motivations for information seeking
• barriers and problems people face when they seek
  information
• techniques, processes, and strategies people use
  as they seek answers to questions
• how and why information behaviors may be affected
  by the information-seeking context
• role and possible effects of intermediaries in
  information-seeking
• challenges intermediaries face in this role

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Recognizing and identifying Information needs

• Wilson (1997)
• Affective, physiological, cognitive motives
• Need for new info, need to elucidate, need to
  confirm
• types of questions orientation, reorientation,
  construction, extension
• Taylor (1968)
• Visceral ?conscious ?formalized ?compromised
• Marchionini (1995) information problem task
• Belkin (1980) anomalous state of knowledge
• Dervin (1992) Gap need to make sense

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Levels of information need
anomalous state of knowledge
Gap
information problem
task
types of questions
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The challenge of articulating needs

• Awareness and understanding of the information
  need
• Stress
• Difficulty in visualizing and describing things,
  especially if they are conceptual and abstract
• Knowledge of the domain
• Experience expertise with the vocabulary of the
  field
• Knowledge of the language related to information
  source variety and structure
• Language barriers

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Wilson Barriers to seeking information

• Personal characteristics
• Cognitive dissonance, educational level, economic
  situation
• Demographic variables, physiological and
  emotional characteristics
• Social and interpersonal barriers
• Attitude of provider, presence of other people,
• Established behavior
• resistance by interest groups
• Environmental/situational barriers
• Time, geography, culture
• Information source characteristics
• Accessibility, credibility, communication
  channels, amount

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To seek or not to seek

• Stress and coping
• Risk / Reward theory
• Self-efficacy
• Not to seek
• Chatman, 1996

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Various types of searching

• Passive attention information acquisition taking
  place without intentional seeking
• Passive search one type of search or other
  behavior resulting in the acquisition of
  information that happens to be relevant to the
  individual
• Active search an individual actively seeking out
  information
• Ongoing search occasional continuing search
  being carried out to update or expand ones
  framework

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Resolving information needs

• Wilson, 1997
• Belkin, 1980
• Kuhlthau, 1993
• Dervin, 1992
• Marchionini, 1995
• Leckie, et al., 1996
• Williamson, 1998
• Pettigrew, 1999

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Everyday Life Information An Ecological Model
of Use
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Search Strategies

• Analytical Planning searches to maximize
  retrieval effectiveness
• Goal-oriented, systematic and formal
• Employ Boolean and proximity operators typically
• Browsing informal, interactive, opportunistic,
  contextual
• scan, observe, navigate, monitor

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Examples of information behavior research
questions
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Intermediaries

• What they are?
• Positive connotations?
• Negative connotations?
• disintermediation

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Information professional support as a social
exchange

• Characteristics
• Unspecific obligations
• Rely on trust
• May result in feelings of gratitude
• Form personal relationships
• Entered into voluntarily
• Symbiotic
• Restricted exchange

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Information professional support as a social
exchange

• Object of the exchange
• Information status
• Why self-interest motivates social exchange
• Most guided by a cooperative motive, and the
  establishment of equity
• How through interpersonal communication
• Occurred in a relational context
• Involved the transmission of various types of
  symbols
• Functional

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Group Tasks Today

• Best paper
• Worst paper
• Most meaningful paper / most applicable for you
  professionally
• How do the papers fit what are the common
  threads or themes?