New Directions in Human Information Behavior

Citation

Jamali, H.R. (2007), "New Directions in Human Information Behavior", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 63 No. 3, pp. 424-425. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410710746817

Human information behaviour (HIB) is one of the most popular and yet most complex research areas in the field of library and information science (LIS). Although there have been hundreds of papers in this area, few books have been published on HIB. This book is a valuable addition to the other books recently published in this area, specifically The Turn by Ingwersen and Järvelin (2005) and Theories of Information Behavior edited by Fisher et al. (2005).

The book is an anthology comprising twelve articles by twenty authors, edited by two of the leading figures in HIB research. The goal of the book as stated by the editors is “to provide an overview of new HIB research directions”. The authors also seek to draw the research field of HIB more closely into the wider theoretical realm of the social sciences, so that they can utilize wider theories and models from sociology, psychology and the other fields. Adopting theories and models from other disciplines is something that the HIB researchers in LIS have benefited from enormously during the last couple of years.

The book is divided into five sections, of which the first and the last comprise introductions and the conclusions by the editors. Chapter 1 provides the structure for the book and gives a summary of the other chapters.

Chapter 2 describes the emerging evolutionary approach to HIB. The chapter proposes a chronology of studies investigating various aspects of HIB throughout the course of human existence. The chronology covers five main eras from upper paleolithic era to the industrial age. The next chapter also involves investigating HIB in a historical context. Chapter 3 discusses the information behaviour in pre‐literate societies with focus on a pre‐industrial tribe in Papua New Guinea and it refers to historical data on the information behaviour of people in the past. In Chapter 4, the authors explore how one's social positioning influences one's information behaviour which, in turn, influences the information‐seeking behaviour of the populations studied.

Spatial and collaborative HIB frameworks are covered in section three. This section has three chapters. The first presents the results of a research study which maps textually mediated information in clinical midwifery. The next chapter discusses the concept of information ground, which is the location or place where information is exchanged. Information ground is a nascent field in LIS research. Chapter 7 concerns information sharing and collaborative information behaviour. The authors draw upon the existing literature and try to define collaborative information behaviour and highlight the gaps in research in this area.

The fourth section covers another four frameworks of HIB including multitasking and co‐ordinating, non‐linear, cognitive, and digital frameworks. Chapter 8 delineates the concept of multitasking in HIB, which is conceived as a binding process that works with HIB to construct an information behaviour process. Based on the multitasking information behaviour, the authors propose a framework for co‐ordinating and integrating the different levels within HIB. Chapter 9 examines non‐linear perspective on information seeking that suggests that HIB is dynamic, non‐linear, and complexly interactive. Appreciating the fact that non‐linear perspective is in its infancy, the author highlight the directions for its future developments. Chapter 10 focuses on metaphor instantiation, which is considered as a part of cognitive human information organizing behaviour (HIOB). The authors discuss various models and theories of cognitive HIOB first and then use three case studies to show the application of metaphor instantiation as a memory device for facilitating unfamiliar information processing. Chapter 11, which is based mainly on the results of a series of log analysis studies discusses emerging patterns of behaviour among consumers of digital information. It identifies and describes the factors that have shaped and features that characterise the information behaviour of new digital consumers.

The last chapter, drawing upon the previous chapters, is an attempt to integrate various conceptual frameworks discussed in the book. The result is an integrated HIB framework. This chapter also highlights the potential areas for the future research in HIB. Among them is the need for research on HIB development over a human lifetime.

The book has an index and includes short biographies of the contributors.

Most of the frameworks and theories in this book have been already discussed in research articles and in fact a few of them (such as information ground and non‐linear perspective) have been presented in the encyclopaedic chapters of the recent book edited by Fisher et al. (2005). However, this research‐oriented book has a different aim and approach and it delineates these frameworks in order to highlight the potential research areas and provide inspiration for the research community of HIB field.

In conclusion, for those who seek to obtain an overview of all research areas in HIB this might not be the perfect answer as it is not as comprehensive as might be expected. However, the book brings a few of the emerging frameworks in HIB research together and the editors have done a good job organising them in a logical way and linking them in their concluding chapter. Given that one of the main aims of the book is promoting the HIB research field by encouraging theory adoption, this book is a worthwhile read that highlights issues with potential for theoretical development.

References

Fisher, K.E., Erdelez, S. and McKechnie, L. (Eds) (2005), Theories of Information Behavior, Information Today, Medford, NJ.

Ingwersen, P. and Järvelin, K. (2005>), The Turn: Integration of Information Seeking and Retrieval in Context, Springer, Dordrecht.