Competency Statement: Describe the fundamental concepts of information-seeking behaviors and how they should be considered when connecting individuals or groups with accurate, relevant and appropriate information.

Introduction

People need information for many reasons, including to learn, to be entertained, and to solve problems, which prompts information seeking. Understanding the behavior, motivations, and constraints during information seeking can explain why a search was a success or not and inform future searches. As an information professional, knowing the concepts and models of information seeking behavior will help me efficiently navigate or design effective information seeking workflows that are accurate, relevant, and appropriate.

Information-seeking behavior

Information-seeking behavior is defined as “the purposive seeking for information as a consequence of a need to satisfy some goal” (Wilson, 2000, p. 2). Early studies in information-seeking behavior sought to study information needs and what they are, how they are satisfied, and whether satisfaction can be improved (Warner, et al, 1973). In the 1980s, Wilson, Dervin, Ellis, and Kulthau developed qualitative human-centered models of information behavior that examines the context of the individual, their role demands, or environment that drives or impedes an individual’s “physiological, cognitive, and effective needs,” sense-making between a situational problem, an outcome, and bridge between them, characteristics of information behavior of disciplinary researchers, and a six-stage process of information-seeking behavior (Wilson, 2000, p. 4). The concepts introduced in these and other models are foundational in studying information-seeking behavior of various information communities and analyzed in everyday life (nonwork) and work-related contexts (Savolainen, 2017).

Everyday Life Information Seeking (ELIS)

The concept of ELIS is generally defined as “the acquisition of various informational elements, which people employ to orient themselves in daily life or to solve problems not directly connected with the performance of professional tasks or full-time study” (Savolainen, 2017). ELIS satisfies the need for information to live a life that “will be acceptable and lead to one’s survival and emotional satisfaction” (Savolainen, 2017, p. 2). Meeting survival and emotional satisfaction includes seeking orienting information, such as monitoring news events, and problem-specific information, such as health issues and serious leisure. Individuals have many sources to select from, such as personal experience and close circles, as well as print, broadcast, and social media. The path of least effort and easy access significantly affects source selection, but the tendency toward human sources has a unique advantage of getting immediate feedback.

Many ELIS models were inspired by Dervin’s sense-making methodology for its user-centered approach and have applied it to study many different contexts and specific groups of people.

Work and task-related information behavior

Information organizations are very interested in maximizing the productivity of professionals, resulting in comparatively more studies about work-related information seeking than ELIS. A general model of information behavior of professionals (Leckie, et al, 1996) examines the work context of the individual: work roles, their associated tasks, and variables including individual demographics, context, frequency, predictability, importance, and complexity, that inform the information need. Individuals may have sources of information of different formats, including formal and informal, internal or external, oral or written, and personal experience, to select from, and the individual will choose a source depending on variables, including familiarity and prior success, trustworthiness, packaging, timeliness, cost, quality, and accessibility of a source, that inform their awareness and selection of an information source. The final feature of this model is the outcome, which provides feedback that completes the search, or new information to continue the search.

This model has been numerously cited and applied to studies of various professions, including computer engineers, which resulted in a model with the additional features of requirements and constraints, or conditioning variables, of an information need which suits that community (Freund, 2015).

Evidence

Evidence #1 – INFO 200 – Information Communities – Information seeking behavior of indie game developers, Blog post

In this blog post, I discuss indie game development as a type of serious leisure, due to its complexity, creativity, and project-based characteristics. The main task in indie game development is programming, design, art, and audio creation. I realized I had set myself up for a lot of work, as these were all different disciplines. For programmers, I looked at Luanne Freund’s model for software engineers and identified the needs of the game programmer, which is to be able to evaluate information that is suitable for the project, or work. As for art and audio designers, I found myself having to investigate information-seeking behavior during the creative process, where Wilson’s model is frequently cited to explore the motivational factors for information-seeking, and for visual and music artists, I realized the motivation to seek information is to catalyze thinking creatively, in other words, to be inspired.

With that, I realized that what creative artists need when information-seeking is source material to browse through and the information literacy to find them.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to use models of information-seeking behavior to take the first step in planning services to assist special communities in finding information.

Evidence #2 – INFO 200 – Information Communities – Indie game developers Research Paper

My research paper about the indie game developer community is an expanded discussion of information-seeking models and the information-seeking behavior of indie game developers. For instance, I discuss and apply Freund’s model to game programmers and how they formulate their task or problem, consider the information sources they have available, and the requirements and constraints that affect their source selection, but I also integrate elements of Robert Stebbin’s (2001) model of serious leisure to counter the non-work aspect of indie game development.

In the end, indie game developers work best in an information environment where they have abundant sources for creative ideation, as well as marketing materials. Both participants of serious leisure and practicing artists share a need to disseminate their products.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to apply models of information-seeking behavior in work, nonwork, and creative process to understand the complexity of information needs of an information communities of serious leisure.

Evidence #3 – Work Experience – Engineering librarian interview prompt

I was invited by Arizona State University (ASU) to make a presentation for an Engineering Librarian interview prompt to answer the question:

What do you see as the most important information literacy skills that engineering students should develop throughout their academic careers, and what library resources will best help engineering students develop those skills? Discuss these skills and resources as they apply to early undergraduate, late undergraduate, and graduate students. Also, what new trends or tools do you foresee being important to engineering students in the next three to five years, and how should engineering librarians be proactive in introducing them to students and faculty?

The first thing I did was research the information-seeking behavior and information needs of engineering students and faculty. My cursory search reminded me of the research I gathered from Freund’s model where software engineers often prefer to rely on prior experience to solve problems, outcomes that they learned from experiential learning during their time in school, as well as the information selection behaviors of junior engineers, who are most likely college graduates. I was also reminded by Wilson’s contextual model when reading about the motivations of first-generation engineering students and their motivations for studying engineering. Through understanding the context behind the motivations, information needs, and experience level of engineering students, I was able to create a scaffolded design of information literacy skills for undergraduate and graduate students. I was also able to extrapolate from these motivations and information needs trends that would sustain the engineering students’ interest in their chosen field, as it was found that many first-generation college students often experience anxiety and prematurely end their studies.

This evidence demonstrates my ability to internalize information-seeking behavior models and concepts to be able to synthesize contextual variables into a presentation and confidently provide services to assist engineering students access information for their educational success.

Conclusion

In work or everyday life, generalized models of information-seeking behavior provides a framework of information needs and invites information professionals to apply them to their user groups to strategize, design, and provide access to their information environments effectively, including troubleshoot where and why a search may or may not be fruitful and iterate upon it. A key theme in these models is the context around the indvidual and their information need. Identifying contextual variables would help me understand a user’s mental model and anticipate barriers that may impede satisfaction of the information need. As technology brings more information to users faster than ever, I expect to discover and keep up with new or developing models of information needs in different groups shared by authoritative LIS sources or scholarly journal articles. I am curious to discover how context plays a role in every new iteration.

References

Case, D. O. & Given, L. M. (2016). Models of information behavior. In D. O. Case & L. M. Given (Eds.) Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs, and behavior (pp. 141-175). Emerald Group Publishing.

Freund, L. (2015). Contextualizing the information-seeking behavior of software engineers. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(8), 1594-1605. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23278

Leckie, G. J., Pettigrew, K. E., & Sylvain, C. (1996). Modeling the information seeking of professionals: A general model derived from research on engineers, health care professionals, and lawyers. Library Quarterly, 66(2), 161-193. https://doi.org/10.1086/602864

Savolainen, R. (2017). Everyday life information seeking. In J. D. McDonald & M. Levine-Clark (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (4^th Ed., pp. 1506-1515).

Stebbins, R.A. (2001). Serious leisure. Society, 38(4), 53–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-001-1023-8

Warner, E. S., Murray, A. D., Palmour, V. E. (1973). Information needs of urban residents. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015005672160&seq=2

Wilson, T. D. (2000). Human information behavior. Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 3, 49-56. https://doi.org/10.28945/576