Created: 2026-01-13 11:24:41 - Touched: 2026-06-13 09:47:15 - Status: Stable

Chapter 1

Lots of introduction about what is information, what is information behaviour and what isn't, how this is studied, its history.

Chapter 2

Discussion of history and evolution of information behaviour as a field. Feels pretty exhaustive. Certainly exhausting. 2.4.1.3 humanities scholars.

2026-01-13 lecture

I have a background in computer science and two decades of experience as a software engineer. I've built a lot of information interfaces during that time, but they've all been done with a focus on the technology. I'm hoping to refocus on the human.

Understand human behaviour related to information so that I can build tools that help people more effectively meet their information goals.

When I was diagnosed as Autistic, I spent a lot of time trying to understand what that meant. Most of the research on the topic focused on the experiences of affluent white boys, and approached the topic from the lens of how inconvenient their behaviour was for their caregivers. The earliest study I ever found (2010!) about Autistic work experiences in libraries was, frankly, horrific. The individual who as the subject of the study was treated like an animal, and wasn't even interviewed as part of the study, though his caregivers and the library staff were. I found it difficult to engage with information about the experiences of Autistics working in libraries because of how they were treated. I have significant misgivings about participating in research myself as a result, and what is research but the formalized collection and processing of information? Perhaps unsurprisingly, community-led participatory approaches are of particular interest to me. Conversely, the information available on the topic of Autistics working in libraries is extremely limited.

Strub, M. R., & Stewart, L. (2010). Case study: Shelving and the Autistic employee. Journal of Access Services, 7(4), 262–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/15367967.2010.508369

https://underwaterbook.club/2025/09/26/autistics-working-in-libraries-a-literature-review/

Google search result ai thing provides incorrect advice for medical issues. HII connects to everything, it's central, it's the most important class just like all the others. Collective work, collaboration. She studied students in a lab.

Introductions. Lots of people interested in true crime and work at the local public library.

Context matters: individual differences, task complexity, whether and how much something is "knowable," work vs everyday life, etc. We need to help with all information behaviour, not just seeking. Emotional, behavioural, cognitive axes.

Not expected to read all of the assigned reading. Read what catches your eye. Read research. Course is standardized on the Information World technique for our research project not because it's the best or most appropriate but because it's hard to manage the course if anyone can research any way they wish. Clusters are predefined, but you can pick a topic within any of them.

"Minimal risk" category for population for ethics considerations. Need to ask. Does information world mapping work when you can't visualize? It seems very difficult to apply this approach to specific research/design questions. Presentation is either march 31st or april 7th. Report is 4-5kw design project is 2-3kw plus prototype of product/system/service. Evidence Summary is just.... summarizing an article? The commentary appears to be an opinionated analysis and otherwise it's just a paraphrased summary. Post-publication peer review? This feels rude honestly.

We talked about parking on campus and wandering through a shopping center trying to find a health facility. "I will not regale you with the story" that she then proceeds to tell. Trust is an important piece of context. And there are myths about information behaviour.

HII Fidel ch1

Fidel, R. (2012). Human Information Interaction: An Ecological Approach to Information Behavior. The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262017008.001.0001

Agent is an individual engaged in an information task. Information system is any system that helps humans deal with information. Humans exist within a community of actors that constrains the context/environment and the task. Information has meaning, is communicated, has an effect, is used for decision making. Ecological approach starts with environmental factors before thinking about cognitive ones.

Systems approach: understand something as it relates to an interconnected web of other things. So to understand HII we have to examine human information interactions and behaviour within the context of the task and its goals, the person doing the task, the environment the task is being conducted in, etc. Holistic. A set of identifiable elements, identifiable relationships between some of the elements, elements are coordinated to accomplish a set of goals.

HII research is to improve the interaction. A holistic approach is required for HII research. Info systems have goals.

Lecture 2026-01-20

Verbs over nouns. Practice: familiar habitual behaviour. List of things to look for during peer review. Notes about IWM.

Re-situating information poverty

Gibson, A. N., & Martin III, J. D. (2019). Re-situating information poverty: Information marginalization and parents of individuals with disabilities. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 70(5), 476–487. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24128

Critical disability theory. Refocuses away from deficits of people who experience information poverty onto the institutions that produce information marginalization. Behaviours of people and groups are largely seen as self-protective in response to prolonged structural marginalization.

Some amount of grumpy from me that this study focused on the experiences of caregivers over the experiences of the disabled individuals, but not every study can do that. Still, I wish it had been acknowledged more, and the impacts on the actual disabled people explored to any extent.

LGBTQIA constructivism

Jia, R. M., Du, J. T., & Zhao, Y. (Chris). (2024). Interaction with peers online: LGBTQIA+ individuals’ information seeking and meaning-making during the life transitions of identity construction. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 75(1), 24–42. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24837

Constructivist perspective, researchers as outside observers doing textual analysis of forum posts. First order coding, second order thematic analysis.

Awareness -> exploration -> living with new identity. Meaning-making through discussion. Cognitive: trying to understand what's going on from an intellectual/theoretical perspective. Affective: emotional impacts and navigating emotional aspects of life transition, validation and encouragement, venting. Situational (practical?): what do I do or say, sharing lived experience. Three stages of transition, orthogonally three interaction types. Some types more prevalent/useful and different stages -> practical applications for how to organize communities or life transition-related information resources. But these aren't clearly delineated.

My own experience as a Labels and a moderator of an online forum like the one they analyzed: a lot of the cognitive theory work at the awareness phase pertains to labels. "Is it okay for me to use this label given my experience?" Meaning-making construcitivism around establishing inclusive definitions for terminology. A lot of the practical advice questions were difficult to answer because of the inadequacy of the provided context; that might be better served by asking peers rather than pseudonymous forum-goers. Emotional support was pretty common in most interactions.

Missing from this analysis is an examination of conflict and marginalization. Some of that is acknowledged, a lot of it isn't. Differences of opinion on definitions, validity of identity, general flame wars, people who have internalized hate and seek to disrupt meaningful communication, and the impact these things have on participants. If the forum was well run, the moderation team likely deleted a lot of it so the researchers wouldn't have a full picture.

Information seeking and communication

Robson, A., & Robinson, L. (2013). Building on models of information behaviour: Linking information seeking and communication. Journal of Documentation, 69(2), 169–193. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220411311300039

Information-seeking and communication model (ISCM).

Intersection of the fields of information behaviour science and communication to create a model that includes both. Analysis of concepts in literature, no experiment. "A new model is proposed that includes key elements of existing models and takes into account not just the information seeker but also the communicator or information provider." This feels like social constructivism. Claims to be the first intersection of these two ideas, which seems unlikely given a 2012 publication date. Still, if it fleshes out the communication aspect of information behaviour it's likely a good addition.

Bates argues that models precede theory, so most of the theory we have in LIS is "really still at the modeling stage." a "tentative proposed set of relationships, which can then be tested for validity" (2005).

Info behaviour Models:

Ellis 1989: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, extracting, verifying, ending.

Kuhlthau 1991: initiation, selection, exploration, forumulation, collection, presentation.

Leckie et al. (1996): different roles and tasks, diagram. Prioritize accessible and familiar, least effort.

Johnson (1997): comprehensive model of information seeking: demographics experience salience beliefs (collectively antecedents), characteristics utilities (collectively information carrier factors), actions. Antecedents are why and where we look. Carrier are evaluation factors for specific sources.

Gorman (1999): unrecognized need, recognized need, pursuit, pursued information need, satisfied information need. Steps relate to providing patient care.

Ingwersen and Ja¨rvelin (2005): I've never seen a diagram like this before. Includes communicative elements. Actors: authors, seekers, system designers, human indexers, gatekeepers, communities of individuals (social, cultural, organizational). Potential meaning-gap between originator of information and its recipient.

Wilson (1981): technically includes communication with other people. There are a lot of Wilson models. Oh hey figure 7 (Wilson 1996) is from the HII guest lecture in Information Sources Services and Retrieval last term. Communication enters the picture in 1999 as two boxes.

Communication models:

Rogers (2003): diffusion model of mass communication, mass media->opinion leaders->individuals.

Maletzke’s (1963): sender and receiver, constraints of message and medium.

Information behaviour includes communication as well as seeking and use, can be examined through actions, people, resources, context. Demographics, expertise, psychological factors, seeker needs and goals, provider needs and goals, accelerators and brakes for information behaviours, emotions, utility and credibility. Some IB models include communication, some comm models include IB, but they're focused on their core field's perspective. This one attempts to be more bridgey.

People with info needs, people who seek, people who receive. Sources and authors, "facilitators." This is certainly the most complex diagram so far. Detailed description of all the boxes and arrows follows.

I prioritized reading this article in the hopes it would have a good social constructivist model I could use to evaluate the tanka poetry article. But ultimately every model discussed in this paper is too complex or focuses on behaviours not exhibited in the article. Maybe that's what I should write about.

2026-01-27 lecture

Resources on ethics, literature review etc released on brightspace.

Models and theories help us understand what's going on inside someone's head, which is difficult to observe directly.

High level conceptual models, identify key components and relationships. Component models and process models.

Research proposal:

Semi-structured interview. Recordings okay, store them securely. Don't submit anything that isn't fully anonymous. Ask questions about practices, experiences, and behaviours. How does information gathering look for them. Coding and thematic analysis. Her slides have suggestions/guidelines/directions to explore, not super fixed requirements.

  1. Familiarization of data
  2. Initial coding
  3. Generating themes
  4. Validity and reliability of themes
  5. Defining and naming of themes
  6. Interpreting and reporting

Drawings help elicit deeper discussions. We're not analyzing the drawing, we're analyzing the conversation.

Proposal, 2000 words due feb 10.

  1. Introduction
  2. Key research/design questions and objectives
  3. Target population
  4. Literature review, conclusion
  5. Appendices (interview script, recruitment materials, informed consent form given to participants)

Set up a meeting if questions.

Design process examples on brightspace.

Information through the lens

Irvine-Smith, S. (2017). Information through the lens: Information research and the dynamics of practice. Information Research, 22(1). https://informationr.net/ir/22-1/colis/colis1603.html

(can we apply this lens to Digital Gardens? does DG have enough social for this?)

Information behaviour->information practice.

Practice characteristics:

Can use these seven characteristics to examine the activities of human information.

Why practice? Behaviour focuses too much on the individual. Too much focus on solving an information need rather than the broader lived information experience. Limited social considerations, context, and communication. Social context is a required consideration for a social constructivist perspective on information. Because most of the information practice is just part of everyday life, it's difficult to examine and "invisible," which is why the practice theory perspective is important: it makes those invisible things visible through the examination within the social context.

Practice theory isn't a theory itself. Practice theories are the "basic unit of analysis of the social." Sakai et al generated several of them. Bourdieu and Giddens both talk about information habits that are adopted based on objective conditions and become self-perpetuating. Giddens' version is more complicated somehow. Schatzki focuses on the purpose, the desired outcomes. Gherardi et al make a distinction between practice as something people do and practice as a way to study what people do. Starting to get a little lost.

So "practice theory" is made up of a bunch of these units, these observations about information activity within the social context. But you can create a definition of "information practice" by examining these units (rather than trying to create a theory based on the observed behaviours themselves). And that takes us back to the list of 7 common characteristics.

Action is what matters in the practice lens, not a theoretical cognitive process but the activities undertaken in the world. Time is an instant, an event, but also the passage of time and intervals of time. Space can be virtual, a conception of the tools used (how the chairs in a classroom affect learning practice), and social positioning within the group (see Bibliometrics and Scholarly Communication Bourdieu's discussion of social capital). Current action is based on history which forms habit, a continuity of experience and refinement of understanding and activity. The body is the mechanism by which activity is undertaken in the world, and Practice requires embodiment to be considered. Maybe the chairs in the classroom belongs under mediation, creating artifacts that carry the past forward and influence ongoing behaviour. Social doesn't just mean to examine the social impact on cognitive behaviour, or the communication practices of an individual; the goal is to understand society as a web of interconnected practices; practices are the embodiment of power in society? Seven aren't exhaustive, or exhaustively described, but are a starting point for considering information practice instead of information behaviour and examining some of the "invisible" aspects of HII.

Goes on to examine these seven characteristics within the current IB research. "In 2000 Brown and Duguid proposed that documents and other information artefacts are active social entities that can bring diverse groups of people together in their pivotal roles as boundary objects (Brown & Duguid, 2000)" not sure I understand what a boundary object is here. Sounds like it's an artefact that spans boundaries between groups for their own purposes, as a way of communicating information across group boundaries. Conway's law somewhat. This is almost a literature review after the analysis.

Information behaviour vs information practice

Savolainen, R. (2007). Information behavior and information practice: Reviewing the “umbrella concepts” of information‐seeking studies. The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 77(2), 109–132. https://doi.org/10.1086/517840

Thorough analysis of literature discussing the differences between these two "umbrella concepts," citing big players and crucial examples, while also noting areas where there's overlap or examples that don't neatly fall into either category or into both. Written a decade before Irvine-Smith's article.

Lecture 2026-02-03

Presentation day for my evidence summary. Hoping it goes well.

Further discussion of information practice vs information behaviour, and now information experience.

Oh no another model. The ecological model, looks like rings on a tree. Chelsea Noble's model has systems of oppression 2023. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/he.20488

It seems like a lot of the criticism of information behaviour vs information practice could easily be resolved by making sure you include things that influence the behaviour of individuals and groups, like social norms and long-term habits formed etc.

Information eXperience is focused on the experience of the individual, what they value and how they feel about it. Experience could be something that happens to you. Subjective.

Information encountering. Serendipity, Sanda Erdelez 2020.Erdelez, Sanda & Makri, Stephann. (2020). Information encountering re-encountered: A conceptual re-examination of serendipity in the context of information acquisition. Journal of Documentation. ahead-of-print. 10.1108/JD-08-2019-0151.

Watching my own presentation from the audience feels weird.

Good conversation. The lack of analysis clarity might be cultural. The longitudinal nature definitely fits Irvine-Smith's time aspect. And the results of this study could be used as data in a meta-analysis that identifies trends etc. Not sure if that's going to be doable given the lack of underlying data and analysis. Qualitative studies often don't aim for reproducibility because they're subjective and experiential.

Narrative analysis vs thematic analysis?

Encounters instead of seeking in TGD youth. Trans friends and online resources/social media. Using emotion as a stand-in for critical evaluation and information literacy skills in evaluating information. Exploring information sources internal to the person (eg interrogating their experience of gender). How do you find a safe provider to seek gender affirming care from? Methods are similar but no central information source. Everyday life experience based on strong personal need. Plausible selves from psychology.

Small worlds vs Information grounds

Savolainen, R. (2009). Small world and information grounds as contexts of information seeking and sharing. Library & Information Science Research, 31(1), 38–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2008.10.007

Spacial and social factors in each are used differently to characterize and contextualize information activities in everyday life. How does each model connect these factors, and how do they differ between the two models?

Context is often described in spacial and temporal terms, eg where information seeking takes place or how long someone holds on to a piece of information. Is context a container in which the behaviour occurs, or an ever-changing fluid concept? This parallels the information behaviour vs information practice debate, where behaviour is focused on an event that starts and stops while practice examines behaviours as changing over time and the formation of habits (and changing social context?). Context as container vs context as "something people do" socially constructed and reconstructed.

Space in the container idea constrains what information can be easily interacted with, but also stabilizes it (eg the wiki at work is stable and "single source of truth" ish). Can be shaped to an extent, person has multiple (work, school, home). "Perspectivist" approach focuses on the subjective interpretation, eg positioning the university library catalogue close for study activities since it's frequently referenced, and sources have to be identified rather than simply being present.

Social context, eg norms and org culture and social networks. Outside of the office, "social" becomes harder to analyze because there's less structure. Another mention of social capital (see Bibliometrics and Scholarly Communication Bourdieu's discussion of social capital). If information is held by individuals, then relative position within the social network and available social capital constrains how that information can be accessed. People tend to connect with others similar to themselves, so information held by dissimilar people become harder to access.

Small world: "little contact with people outside their immediate social milieu and are only interested in the information that is perceived as useful, that which has a firm footing in everyday reality, and responds to some practical concern" (Chatman, 1991, p. 447).

Information grounds: "synergistic environment(s) temporarily created when people come together for a singular purpose but from whose behavior emerges a social atmosphere that fosters the spontaneous and serendipitous sharing of information." Pettigrew (1999, p. 811). "Information grounds are perceived as a social construct rooted in an individual's combined perceptions of place, people, and information".

Small world is not just metaphorical (small group of people regularly interacted with) but also literal (home, encampment, shelter, office). Location determines information needs as well as access. Also virtual space counts Burnett et al. (2001, p. 540). IG proposes that space is the environment temporarily created by people working together on an information task, social context and serendipity. Arrangement of chairs matters but only when people are in the space. Convenience impacts where the information ground is created (Oldenburg third spaces 1999). "positive, inviting, attractive, free, and not constraining" emotion/subjectivity is central to spacial in IG. While IG exist and are influenced by the space they occupy, they can also move and aren't strictly defined by the space.

Social in small world is governed by social norms (and now we're referencing Merton). Insiders are considered more useful information sources because the information exists within the context of the shared worldview. Outsider information is less useful/sought since it has to be translated into the small world's worldview. Systems often small, depend on strong reason to belong (eg blood relations) and physical proximity (easily accessible, see each other often). People on the same floor know each other better than people on other floors of the same building. Spacial and social factors interact. Concerns about social position/saving face. "A small world is a community of like-minded individuals who share co-ownership of social reality." Social in IG is more inductive rather than relying on theories from sociology. Homogenous groups create strong ties and serve emotional support roles more, while heterogeneous groups had weak ties and focused more on information exchange. Most IG participation considered voluntary, but "hostage phenomena" exist when people are forced together eg bus stops (student group projects?). Strong vs weak ties gave way to actor roles gave way to people-place-information trichotomy.

Small world social norms controlled by insiders constrain information behaviours in the small world, generally feel closed; people will be stuck with each other for a long time. IG is open, people join or leave as they wish, may spontaneously arise and dissolve, often occur in third spaces.

2026-02-10 Lecture

Do you think the situational analysis element would be valuable to add to your own planned research for this class? Yes.

Good practice with Autumn going through her interview questions. How do you draw change over time? How can you angle the questions and prompts to steer people towards your research topic? Don't share anecdotes as the interviewer because that's kinda biased, focus on their experience not yours. I'm looking forward to her paper and presentation.

2026-03-03

We're learning about cave diving. It requires a lot of information seeking/sharing important to stay safe. IWM Greyson O'Brien and Shoveller. Interview transcript clean up gives good opportunity to get to know the data. Coding chunks of variable text. Bernard's coding colored highlighters? Look in unhighlighted areas for additional coding opportunities. Vetting potential dive partners as an example of Small World. Trustworthiness is important for peer-to-peer information sharing. Gatekeeping to "protect" naive divers, power dynamics. Vouching, "we trust Mike therefore we'll trust you." Multiple participants said "the only reason I'm telling you this is because you're also a cave diver."

Methodology includes recruitment. Include course readings in the literature review.

Lots of factors relate to information avoidance. Does "I don't think this is true so I'm not going to listen to it" count as avoidance? People recontextualize their understanding of their original country when they transplant based on the new experiences they have.

2026-03-10 Avoidance and overload, health info, misinfo/disinfo, thematic analysis

avoidance and overload

Avoidance is more about not exposing yourself to information, rather than discounting it when you are exposed. Overload is withdrawing; too much info to process can lead to satisficing and reduced quality of results. May choose to limit number of channels, number of sources per channel. May filter things earlier rather than deeply exploring sources and then deciding.

mis/dis

Information/library science only 2.2% of literature on disinformation/misinformation. Karlova and Fisher (2013) social process model for dissemination of mis/dis. Health information as example of evaluation strategies?

thematic analysis

Braun and Clarke (2006) basis of thematic analysis in psychology research. Braun & Clarke (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101. Description of data is set in "rich detail". Note what matched your expectations and what surprised you/didn't.

  1. Familiarize with the data
  2. Initial generation of codes
  3. Look for patterns in codes
  4. Verify you're being consistent
  5. Define/refine/name themes
  6. Explain the themes and relate them to each other and research questions, should be distinct, why are these interesting

Code book: code, subcode, working definition, examples+citations

Report: include enough information to evaluate the quality of your research. Tanka analysis didn't! Findings/results = summarize and describe your data (themes). Discussion: connect it to literature review, reflect on findings, discuss implications, provide recommendations.

2026-03-17 Groups

Information behaviour changes depending on the size of the group. Where are the boundary points? Individual, pair, small group, organization, communities, societies. Reflections on our past group work experience. All of this is about social and logistical elements not information behaviour. Interaction, interdependence, shared cognition, awareness: a group as an actor. Layers of interactions required to coordinate activities. Spent time on planning and coordination rather than doing, some of the doing happens together or some separate, some sync some async, and maintenance/monitoring activities (are we going to hit our deadlines). This is so many questions and discussion and not things that are authoritative or evidence-based.

Hertzum M 2010 collaborative grounding breakdowns in collaborative information seeking: distance between actors, communication may be more important than seeking. Roles appear and become increasingly important.

Presentation: Why does it matter to you and your community? What is compelling about what you discovered, what are the implications? Don't need to cover every detail of the study; noteworthy results, challenges, surprises, reflections, suggestion for the future.

Paper: intro (scope, context, significance, rq), lit review (relevant info, include feedback), methods (recruit, describe data collection and analysis, reported in the past tense), results (thematic framing of data), discussion (meaning and significance, what's new), method reflection (how did using IWM go), conclusion, references, appendices.

2026-03-31

Last day of being a paramedic. It's wet. I'm nervous because I'm presenting about my research project tonight.

Romance happily ever after provides security that allows readers to engage with difficult relationship experiences because they know it's going to turn out okay. Similar to sci-fi's use of the future/aliens/etc as a way to discuss contemporary social issues with distance that makes them more approachable.

latent dirichlet allocation?

Epsilon Lyrae.

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