Library & Information Science Research 

About: Library & Information Science Research is an academic journal published by Elsevier BV. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Information science & Information seeking. It has an ISSN identifier of 0740-8188. Over the lifetime, 1241 publications have been published receiving 43738 citations. The journal is also known as: library organization.

Everyday life information seeking: Approaching information seeking in the context of “way of life”

Abstract: The study offers a framework for the study of everyday life information seeking (ELIS) in the context of way of and mastery of life. Way of life is defined as the “order of things,” manifesting itself, for example, in the relationship between work and leisure time, models of consumption, and nature of hobbies. Mastery of life is interpreted as “keeping things in order;” four ideal types of mastery of life with their implications for ELIS, namely optimistic-cognitive, pessimistic-cognitive, defensive-affective and pessimistic-affective mastery of life are outlined. The article reviews two major dimensions of ELIS, there are. the seeking of orienting and practical information. The research framework was tested in an empirical study based on interviews with teachers and industrial workers, eleven of both. The main features of seeking orienting and practical information are reviewed, followed by suggestions for refinement of the research framework.

Social network analysis: An approach and technique for the study of information exchange☆

Abstract: Social network analysis is an approach and set of techniques used to study the exchange of resources among actors (i.e., individuals, groups, or organizations). One such resource is information. Regular patterns of information exchange reveal themselves as social networks, with actors as nodes in the network and information exchange relationships as connectors between nodes. Just as roads structure the flow of resources among cities, information exchange relationships structure the flow of information among actors. Social network analysis assesses information opportunities for individuals or groups of individuals in terms of exposure to and control of information. By gaining awareness of existing information exchange routes, information providers can act on information opportunities and make changes to information routes to improve the delivery of information services.

Discovered by chance: The role of incidental information acquisition in an ecological model of information use

Abstract: The role of information which is incidentally or accidentally acquired has been neglected in the study of information-seeking behavior. The study reported in this article focused on “incidental information acquisition” as a key concept and investigated the information-seeking behavior of 202 older adults, aged 60 and over, from both metropolitan Melbourne and rural areas in the Australian state of Victoria. The approach to the study was ecological in the sense that a picture was built up of information seeking in the context of the lives of the people in the sample, both individually and collectively. A particular and unusual focus of the study was the role of telecommunications, especially the telephone, in information seeking. The implications for society's systems of information provision are discussed, together with ramifications of the finding that older people will be slower than other groups to accept computer-based sources of information for everyday life. Everyone has some set of habits or routines for keeping his internal model of the world up to date…. We have friends, relatives, work associates, and acquaintances to whom we talk regularly and with whom we exchange news and views. We have habits of reading and watching and listening to public vehicles of communication—newspapers, television, radio, magazines and books. These are not random, but patterned activities…. [I]nformation is in part acquired because it is deliberately sought…. It is also found where it is not specifically sought, as an accidental concomitant of routine activities with other purposes or as pure accident.… [I]t is clear that we could describe individual patterns of information-gathering activity, both where the search for information was the primary motive and where it was incidental….(Wilson, 1977, pp. 36–37).

“If it is too inconvenient I'm not going after it:” Convenience as a critical factor in information-seeking behaviors

Abstract: In today's fast-paced world, anecdotal evidence suggests that information tends to inundate people, and users of information systems want to find information quickly and conveniently. Empirical evidence for convenience as a critical factor is explored in the data from two multi-year, user study projects funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The theoretical framework for this understanding is founded in the concepts of bounded rationality and rational choice theory , with Savolainen's (2006) concept of time as a context in information seeking , as well as gratification theory , informing the emphasis on the seekers' time horizons. Convenience is a situational criterion in peoples' choices and actions during all stages of the information-seeking process. The concept of convenience can include their choice of an information source, their satisfaction with the source and its ease of use, and their time horizon in information seeking. The centrality of convenience is especially prevalent among the younger subjects (“millennials”) in both studies, but also holds across all demographic categories—age, gender, academic role, or user or non-user of virtual reference services. These two studies further indicate that convenience is a factor for making choices in a variety of situations, including both academic information seeking and everyday-life information seeking, although it plays different roles in different situations.