Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Information and information seeking
- 2 Information seekers and electronic environments
- 3 Information-seeking perspective and framework
- 4 Foundations for personal information infrastructures: Information-seeking knowledge, skills, and attitudes
- 5 Analytical search strategies
- 6 Browsing strategies
- 7 Designing support for browsing: A research and development perspective
- 8 The continuing evolution of information seeking
- 9 Future directions and conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
3 - Information-seeking perspective and framework
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Information and information seeking
- 2 Information seekers and electronic environments
- 3 Information-seeking perspective and framework
- 4 Foundations for personal information infrastructures: Information-seeking knowledge, skills, and attitudes
- 5 Analytical search strategies
- 6 Browsing strategies
- 7 Designing support for browsing: A research and development perspective
- 8 The continuing evolution of information seeking
- 9 Future directions and conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportional to my skill to deal with it.
Mark Van Doren, Liberal EducationInformation seeking involves a number of personal and environmental factors and processes. In this chapter we identify these factors and processes and see how they work together to define and constrain information seeking. Before reading further, stop and consider the many information-seeking activities you perform each day. Suppose you have a well-defined information need such as finding a phone number for a business in a foreign city. What do you need to know to begin? What things do you already know about telephones, businesses, and information seeking that will help in your search? What sources could help? How can you determine whether they are available? How do you use them? What are the costs in time or money? How will you know when you have found the correct number? What kinds of questions can you imagine for a more openended but better-focused information problem such as understanding the implications of the European Common Market's trade agreement with Japan on what investments to make for a child's college trust fund? How would your strategies differ for a fuzzy problem like gaining information to improve one's knowledge of a domain of interest? Clearly, we encounter many varieties of information problems and apply varied information-seeking strategies to solve these problems. To understand this variety, it is useful to have a framework that explicates factors and processes common to information seeking in general.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Information Seeking in Electronic Environments , pp. 27 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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