Re-Thinking Our Concept Of Users

Abstract

This article provides a critical analysis of some of the key theories and assumptions that underpin prevailing approaches to the concept of ‘information user’ in contemporary information research and professional practice, suggesting that they continue to reflect a tacitly systems-oriented focus. The author draws on the Sense-Making theories of Brenda Dervin and the discourse analytic work of Michel Foucault, as well as his own research, to outline a more holistic approach to understanding the complex relationship between people, information, and their social context. This recommendation includes a greater focus on context, on long-term relationships, and the complex role of emotion and embodiment in people’s sense-making. AARL March 2009 vol 40 no 1 pp 22–35

It is now more than twenty years since Dervin & Nilan¹ wrote their ground-breaking ARIST review, describing the emergence of a ‘user-centred paradigm’, in what was then known as the Information Needs & Uses literature. The subsequent two decades have seen this perspective, focussing theoretical attention on the information user and his/her needs rather than information systems, move from being an ‘alternative’ paradigm to being very much the mainstream, not only in academic information research but across the information professions. In doing so, it has, without question, not only greatly increased our understanding of the complex relationship between people and information, but also contributed to the development of much more ‘user-friendly’ information services and systems.

However, as this paper will explore, despite many theoretical developments over the last two decades, on a fundamental level most prevailing models of information behaviour, while claiming to be holistic models of the relationship between people and information, continue to focus almost exclusively on a narrow set of behaviours related to users’ engagement with information systems.

Despite claims to have moved beyond a systems-centric approach, this paper will argue that most prevailing approaches manifest a task-oriention that is a legacy of the field’s origins in library and information system evaluation.

This paper draws on post-structuralist and discourse analytic theories and techniques to briefly examine the relationship between prevailing models and approaches in information behaviour research and their historical antecedents and social contexts. It questions the extent to which an implicitly systems-centred construction of information behaviour has limited the field’s ability to explore alternatives, and asks whether alternative constructions might not better represent the interests of information users and researchers. The paper describes one such alternative approach, which uses a range of theoretical perspectives, including Dervin’s Sense-Making and Foucaults’s discourse analysis, as well as the author’s own research, to develop a more holistic approach to exploring the relationship between people and information. This acknowledges the social nature of people’s information behaviour, and eschews a focus on individual problem-solving in order to examine such factors as the affective nature of sense-making, and the importance of ongoing relationships.

Metaphors, Discourse Analysis & Deconstruction

Savolainen² has noted the growing influence of metaphoric and discourse analytic approaches in the humanities and social sciences in recent decades, as post-modern, post-structuralist perspectives have problematised earlier modernist constructions of language as a ‘neutral’ conveyor of meaning³. This ‘linguistic turn’ emphasises the central role of language - shared sets of signs, symbols and representations – in our individual and collective sense-making processes.

The current analysis of models and approaches in information research has been strongly influenced by theories and techniques derived from the work of post-structuralist theorists such as Michel Foucault^{4 5 6}; Rabinow⁷, and Jacques Derrida^{8 9}. Foucault’s theories on the discursive construction of power/knowledge have been used by a number of writers in an LIS context (e.g. Frohmann¹⁰; Talja¹¹; Olsson^{12 13 14}) to problematise and challenge some of the key assumptions that underpinning approaches to information research, especially those associated with the influential cognitivist school.

Foucault argued that knowledge is not objective – to be measured in terms of its supposed correspondence to an external reality – but is rather an intersubjective social construct, a product of the shared beliefs and interpretive practices (what Foucault called the discursive rules) shared by a particular community or communities at a particular point in space and time. ‘For Foucault, there is no external position of certainty, no universal understanding that is beyond history and society’¹⁵. Derrida’s deconstructionist approach is grounded in a parallel worldview. Derrida argues that since all meaning is contextual and based on difference, any philosophical or social theory that claims to uncover a ‘fundamental’ truth is inherently flawed. His deconstructionist approach is then, a ‘method for revealing the radical contextuality of all systems of thought’¹⁶

In drawing on these approaches, this analysis aims to develop an understanding of models of information seeking as products of their social/discursive context. It seeks to uncover the interests, assumptions, and preconceptions that underpin them, and that have shaped the focus and interests of the field of information behaviour research. In explicitly recognising the nature of models and theories as researchers’ constructs – rather than representations of ‘reality’ – the paper opens their status up for debate, and allows the possibility of alternative constructions that may better fit the challenges facing information researchers and the information/knowledge professions in the 21st century.

Prevailing Models & Approaches

That the antecedents of information behaviour research lie in library and information system evaluation has long been acknowledged¹⁷ Furthermore, despite the many theoretical and methodological changes in recent decades as information needs and uses research has evolved into the field of information behaviour, the ties between information behaviour research and information retrieval research, on the one hand, and the information professions, both traditional and emerging, on the other, remain extremely strong

This is hardly surprising when one considers the social context of most information behaviour researchers and theorists. A considerable majority are either academics or research students working in LIS/I-schools and pursue professional interests oriented to educating information professionals. Further, research funding, both private and government, in many Western countries, including Australia, the US and the UK, has in recent times tended to strongly favour practice-oriented and/or commercialisable research. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that both prevailing theories and models of information behaviour and the bulk of current empirical research reflect a world-view focussed on information systems and services.

Of course, these parelles between the worldviews of information researchers and information professionals are as much a strength as a weakness. Information managers and system designers are among the principal audiences for information behaviour research, and (as discourse theory would point out) their ability to understand and accept the messages conveyed to them is dependent on sharing a common discourse - an ‘archive’¹⁸ of shared knowledge, values and beliefs. There can be little doubt, for example, that one contributing factor in cognitivist researchers’ success in influencing system design has been their use of the vocabulary of artificial intelligence to describe human behaviour.

The aim of the present critique is, therefore, not to damn all that has gone before from a position of 20/20 hindsight, nor to devalue the achievements of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Rather, at a time when observers are chronicling the emergence of new discourses in information research^{19 20}, its aim is to contextualise what has gone before: to see it not as a teleology, but as a socio-historically located discourse, and from this position ask such questions as: ‘In what ways do user-centred models of information behaviour reflect a tacit systems orientation?’; ‘How does this influence what does and what does not receive researchers’ attention?’; and ‘How might a different discursive perspective allow us to construct people’s relationship with information in a different way?’

It is therefore important, as Julien²¹ has pointed out, for us to consider the extent to which prevailing ‘user-centred’ approaches to information research and models of information seeking are based on an implicitly systems-centric perspective. If one of the cornerstones of Dervin & Nilan’s analysis of traditional, systems-centred information research was a critique of its narrow, focus on systems use, then perhaps it is time to ask whether the user-centred paradigm has gone far enough. Indeed, as Julien also pointed out, the continued use of the term ‘user’ is significant in this context: it carries with it the implication of a silent ‘system-’.

This paper will argue that the ongoing inter-relationship of information behaviour research, information retrieval, and the information professions has influenced the development of mainstream contemporary information behaviour research in a number of ways. These include: a theoretical and empirical focus on purposive information seeking and searching; a focus on information need as the primary instigator of information behaviour; the prevalence of an individually-focussed, problem-solving construction of information behaviour; and the pre-eminence of cognitivist theoretical and methodological approaches.

Wilson²² has pointed out that information search behaviour is only one aspect of information seeking behaviour, which is itself only one aspect of information behaviour. Yet, as he also noted, “Models of information behaviour... appear to be fewer than those devoted to information-seeking behaviour or information searching”. This narrow focus on information seeking and searching has also been noted in reviews of the empirical literature of the field^{23 24}. This apparent discrepancy is one clear example of the ways in which the socio-historical/ discursive context of information behaviour research has influenced the research interests and practices of researchers in the field. For while information seeking and searching behaviour may only comprise a small percentage of the average person’s information behaviour, it remains the aspect perceived as being of greatest interest to the designers and managers of information systems and services. With the growing influence of knowledge management, a field focussed on informal knowledge-sharing in professional communities, as well as the increasing interest amonst information professionals in collaborative knowledge sharing and creation in virtual environments such as wikis, blogs, and social networking sites such as Facebook, a re-evaluation of this narrow focus seems to be timely.

Since at least the early 1980s, theories and models of information seeking/ behaviour have constructed information need as the instigator of information behaviour. Belkin²⁵, for example, argued that information seeking behaviour is driven by a person’s recognition of an Anomalous State of Knowledge (ASK) – that their existing knowledge structures are no longer adequate to resolve their current problem-state. Other influential models of information behaviour to position information need and uncertainty as central concepts include: Krikelas²⁶, Ellis²⁷ Ingwersen²⁸, Kuhlthau²⁹, Wilson³⁰ and even aspects of Dervin’s & Nilan³¹.

All of these models follow a common pattern: a recognised information need/ gap/anomalous state of knowledge is seen as instigating active information seeking; this active seeking continues until the need is met/gap is filled or until the seeker abandons the search.

This focus on the purposive information seeking of individuals has led to an essentially atomistic approach to constructing information behaviour. A number of factors are likely to have contributed to this focus, including the growing influence of both marketing discourses in the information professions (indeed, in Western society in general), and cognitivist theories in information research. However, perhaps one reason for the success of such ‘fairy-tale’ models (like fairy tales, they have a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end) is that they echo the pattern of many information professionals interactions with their client, such as a reference interview or a database search. They begin by defining a query, proceed through purposive searching, and conclude with the client being supplied with ‘information’. Yet the question we need to ask ourselves is: while such models might effectively represent the information professionals’ view, are they equally effective at representing other people’s sense-making processes? Or do they actually represent a tacitly systems-centred orientation?

Frohmann³², Talja³³ and Julien³⁴ have all critiqued this focus on information need as the primary instigator of information behaviour. They point out that this focus has led to a construction of the user in which “[t]heir ignorance … rather than their knowledge”³⁵ is their defining characteristic. Similarly, Julien has argued that prevailing approaches “conceive of users of information systems as ‘children’ or ‘patients’ whose symptoms require diagnosis”³⁶. She further points out the inequity of the implicit power relations embedded in this construction:

When we construct our positions as experts and our clients’ positions as novices who require help, we set up an unequal power relationship. In Western societies, accepting help has connotations for the recipient of “inferiority, dependency, and inadequacy…³⁷

Talja argues that information users might, with at least equal validity, be defined not by their lack of knowledge in relation to a given problem situation – as ‘uncertain people who need help’ – but rather as ‘knowing subjects, as cultural experts’.³⁸

Another key feature of all the models listed above, and, as Wilson³⁹ suggests, of information behaviour research in general, is that they represent the purposive information seeking of individuals. Julien has pointed out that studies of the purposive seeking behaviour of relatively privileged academic and professional groups, such as academic researchers, university professionals, and lawyers remain the focus of the majority of studies undertaken. When these studies form the basis of ‘general’ models of information behaviour, we are tacitly privileging certain communities and kinds of behaviour, while other aspects of information behaviour and practices go largely unstudied.⁴⁰

Dervin⁴¹ has questioned the validity of such ‘trans-situational’ models, with their claims to be general models of information seeking to explain the behaviour of all individuals, regardless of their social context. This individual, trans-situational focus is a particular feature of cognitivist research:

The work of information behaviour researchers identified with the cognitive approach has therefore focussed on explaining variations in information behaviour according to characteristics or attributes of the individual and the processes in which the individual is involved …These attempts have resulted in models of the information-seeking process that are context-independent.⁴²

A narrow focus on information seeking is not a feature of cognitivst research alone. Frohmann⁴³ and Savolainen⁴⁴ argued that Dervin’s Sense-Making, at least as it is represented in her early work, also “concentrates more on individual making of sense than on the construction and reconstruction of cognitive order through societal negotiation processes”⁴⁵. Similarly, Dervin & Nilan identified Dervin as among those “focussing on cognitive behaviour and developing cognitive approaches to information needs & uses”⁴⁶. Dervin herself has noted that this individually-focussed Sense-Making has been the most common construction among information researchers adopting the methodology⁴⁷. With an ‘outsider’s’ insight into what has historically been a field dominated by American voices, Savolainen suggested that early Sense-Making reflects:

…the basic values of American culture …the central position of individual actor, the importance of making things happen and moving forward in spite of barriers faced, and relying on individual capacities in problem solving.⁴⁸

This characterisation might accurately be applied to many other mainstream approaches in information research, such as cognitivism. Its basis in values, important not only in American but Western culture as a whole, may be one factor in these approaches’ widespread influence apon information behaviour researchers.

As a field, information behaviour research can justifiably claim to have ‘moved beyond the library’, and broadened its focus beyond the narrow confines of library and information system evaluation. Nonetheless, it might be argued that in many cases, researchers have achieved this by extending the existing information service orientation rather than by creating a completely new paradigm. Certainly, the transactional nature of many models of information seeking – where information need leads to purposeful seeking until the need is satisfied – seems better oriented to the service provider’s perspective than to developing a holistic picture of how this behaviour fits into the life-world of the person involved.

An Alternative Approach – A New discourse?

Savolainen has outlined the development of a new “umbrella discourse”⁴⁹ in information studies – ‘information practice’ – which has emerged in the first decade of the 21st century as a critical alternative to the ‘information behavior’ discourse which has dominated user research in recent decades. Savolainen follows Talja in suggesting that the key characteristic of this new discursive approach is that it represents ‘a more sociologically and contextually oriented line of research’ which:

...shifts the focus away from the behavior, action, motives and skills of monological individuals. Instead the main attention is directed to them as members of various groups and communities that constitute the context of their mundane activities.⁵⁰

As with any new discourse, the reasons for its emergence at this moment in the history of our discipline are complex. One factor may be, as Foucault would likely suggest, that the dynamic, shifting nature of discourse – the ‘battle for truth’⁵¹ – inevitably leads to the birth of oppositional discourses. So, after more than two decades of ‘user-centred’ research, and with Dervin and Nilan’s ‘alternative paradigm’ and firmly established in academic information behaviour research, it should not surprise us that an increasing number of critical voices have emerged. That many of these critical voices should have found some measure of cohesion in adopting a more social orientation, often allied to a social constructivist epistemological standpoint, is no doubt due to a broader paradigmatic shift in the social sciences – even in the United States, long a bastion of positivism – brought about by the influence of post-modernist approaches. This shift has provided this emergent IS discourse with theories, techniques, and vocabularies with which to critique existing approaches, and has also helped to create a discursive environment in which such critiques are more likely to find a receptive audience.

I see my own research as very much connected to this emerging discursive space. Both meta-theoretically and methodologically, it is hybrid, drawing not only on existing information behaviour research, but on a range of different ideas and approaches from a variety of disciplines in order to develop an alternative approach – a different lens with which to explore the relationship between people, information, and their social contexts. Prominent influences have been Foucault’s (1977) ideas on the discursive construction of power/knowledge (pouvoir/savoir), and the more recent developments of Dervin’s Sense-Making.^{52 53}

My doctoral research examined how 15 international information behaviour researchers made sense of the work of an author prominent in the literature of their field - in this case, Brenda Dervin. A more detailed account of the findings of this study have been published elsewhere^{54 55}. My current study explores how academic researchers and theatre professionals (actors, writers, designers, and directors) make sense of the culturally iconic author, William Shakespeare. The 40 participants to date include members of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival (Canada), Tampereen Työväen Teatteri (Finland) and Globe Shakespeare, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre (UK), as well as researchers from University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto and Wilfrid Laurier University (Canada), Tampere and Helsinki universities (Finland, as well as educators from London’s Central School of Speech & Drama and Shakespeare researchers from Oxford, Cambridge, City, and Warwick universities (UK).

Through applying this new theoretical and methodological approach, a very different picture of the relationship between people and information has begun to emerge, one frequently at odds with prevailing models and approaches in information research.

The findings of both studies strongly support Dervin’s argument that an information user ought to be seen not in terms of ‘neediness’ but as “an expert in her world (e.g. in her body, her work, her life)”⁵⁶. Their sophisticated constructions of the authors studied were grounded in their previous professional and educational experiences and their understanding of existing knowledge and accepted practices (discursive rules) in their field/s.

Social Sense-Making

One very strong feature of both studies is the relative lack of importance participants attached to purposive information seeking. Instead, the events that participants described as having the greatest influence on their sense-making were ‘social’ interactions: informal conversations with their colleagues or mentors, interactions at rehearsals, conferences or workshops - social activities associated with their role/s as researchers, students, actors, directors, etc.

Dan and I have been colleagues for may years … I would say that probably any thought that I’ve had about Dervin has passed through Dan to me. The gold is, the discovery of the New World by the Portuguese, the gold travelled straight from Brazil to London via Lisbon. So I think that any gold of Dervin came directly through Dan. (Gareth, researcher)

You learn the most just being in the rehearsal room with other actors ... not that you try and copy them but just seeing how they work, what the process is ... when I understudied for Julia, it was like following her tracks in the snow ... you know, I could see where I should put my feet... (Portia, actor)

Participants emphasised the informal and interactive nature of such discussions, talking about how they occurred “over quite a long time…many months”, and contextualising them in terms of their established working relationships with their colleagues: “And we worked together, she worked with me and that’s where we did some stuff together”. It is perhaps particularly striking that participants in my Dervin study – information seeking researchers – did not regard active information seeking as playing a significant role in shaping their constructions of the author.

People & Texts

Participants in both studies often explicitly linked their engagements with texts to their interactions with other people:

Obviously I’d read the play, done background research, seen it on stage but it wasn’t ‘til I got into the rehearsal room, starting working with IAGO [the director] and the other actors that I really started to feel I understood it … that’s usually how it goes. (Timon, actor)

The first contact with Dervin’s work was when I was working as a part time tutor … And I was working with a senior lecturer … So I read that particular piece at the time …. I thought … this is a very neat summary but it’s a neat summary in a fairly dense article and I was pleased to have at the time a colleague say to me “Look focus upon pages 11 to 16, that’s where the nuts and bolts is”. (Brendan, researcher)

For example, in the Dervin study 13 of the 15 participants’ initial contact with the author’s work involved interaction with another person. Furthermore, as the above quotes illustrate, participants’ sense-making was highly contextualised – they needed to understand the meaning of a particular text in terms of their work role, whether as actor, director, designer or academic researcher; their organisational context; and the particular task, project or production they were engaged in at the time.

Ongoing Relationships

It was clear from their accounts that, contrary to prevailing models described above, participants in both studies did not see their behaviour in an atomistic way. Participants frequently described the significant influences on their constructions in the context of long-term relationships – with other people and with the written work of authors.

I’ve been performing Shakespeare for more than four decades now. On the one hand, he’s like an old friend but I’m always finding something new. You bring your experience, your craft, your sense of what Shakespeare is, to each production. It forms your approach – but then you always find something unexpected – a new insight, something unexpected... amazing. (Rosencrantz, actor).

Rather than a series of isolated encounters with information sources, participants spoke of the on-going nature of their relationships. Each individual encounter (whether with a person or a text) built on the participant’s previous experience, enriching their constructions of both the author and their informants.

A number of participants emphasised the importance of the trust and mutual understanding typically developed over a long working relationship:

Well naturally because I knew her so well – we were colleagues, had worked together for a long time. So not only did I respect her opinion a great deal …there was a kind of shorthand between us. We didn’t have to go into every detail …If she said something was important or I should read that, then obviously I would listen. (Olivia, researcher)

Affect

This is one example of the important role of affective factors played in the sense-making processes of participants in both studies. Particularly striking, in light of information research’s tendency to focus on negative aspects of affect⁵⁷ is the tendency of participants to describe emotion as a positive part of their sense-making.

Theatre professionals in general, and actors in particular, demonstrated a strong awareness of the importance of emotional sense-making:

As an actor, you need to do more than understand the play in an academic way… you need that emotional connection to the character and to the story. I need to FEEL it! (Imogen, Actor)

Some directors are more interested in the spectacle …treat you like a puppet - “Go down stage and stop here.” But the really good directors, what I call ‘actor’s directors’, who really help you find the character, talk a lot about what you character should be feeling at that point in the play. (Antony, Actor)

It may be that this self-awareness and openness about the importance of emotion – and the fact that they have established discourses to discuss them – may set theatre professionals apart from most other Western communities, making them a particularly valuable community to research.

A striking feature of some participants’ accounts were examples of a negative emotion playing a positive role in their sense-making:

I went to the university library with my husband’s card and got out everything they had on As You Like It. And I was reading one … it made me so angry I threw it across the room! And then I went “Wait – anger’s good. It means you must know something. Why does it make you angry?” And that was a really big breakthrough for me. (Portia, actor)

Affect, it seems clear, has a much more complex influence on people’s individual and collective sense-making than information researchers have acknowledged.

Embodiment

The influence of cognitivist approaches drawing on Brookes’ fundamental equation has led information researchers to conceive of information as anything which modifies an individual’s knowledge structures⁵⁸. Yet the findings of my Shakespeare study suggest that such a narrow focus on cognition is too limited to capture the complexity of participants’ sense-making.

For theatre professionals, understanding Shakespeare involved much more than a cerebral process: their professional lives are based on an ability to embody their knowledge. Designers need to embody their knowledge through set and costume designs, directors through ‘blocking’ the movements of their actors:

As I’m going through the text, I need to constantly think about how I’m going to make this work ... especially in this theatre with its long thrust stage and audience on three sides. (Iago, director)

For actors, embodiment is a much more literal process: they need to physically become their character (at least for a few hours traffic upon the stage):

I need to find the characters voice ... the way they move. That’s where the voice and movement coaches can be so helpful. (Portia, actor)

An actor once said to me “How do I be a Canadian Prince of Denmark?” And really that’s what it’s all about ... making the audience believe he IS Hamlet! (Rosalind, voice coach)

Some of the other younger actors and I formed ‘Medieval Fight Club’. We’d get into the rehearsal room with the swords and stuff and really go at it... Trying to make it real ... move like warriors ... (Timon, actor)

Clearly, this is a concept that might usefully be applied to the sense-making of many other groups, from surgeons and athletes to carpenters and engineers.

Conclusion

The ‘user-centred’ paradigm has served both information researchers and practitioners well over the last two decades. Yet the undeniable benefits it has brought should not blind us to the potential short-comings of prevailing approaches. We ought to acknowledge that these approaches are both an evolution of what had gone before and the product of ideas, beliefs and assumptions that were themselves a product of a particular discursive context.

Now, in a new millennium, as we seek to learn from the past and develop new approaches, it is perhaps appropriate that we look not only to other fields and disciplines, but also to the work of one of the progenitors of user-centrism, Brenda Dervin. Sense-Making theory has developed considerably since the mid-eighties, and a more recent quote very much captures the complexity hinted at in my own studies:

…embodied in materiality and soaring across time-space …a body-mind-heart-spirit living in time-space, moving from a past, in a present, to a future, anchored in material conditions; yet at the same time with an assumed capacity to sense-make abstractions, dreams, memories, plans, ambitions, fantasies, stories pretences that can both transcend time space and last beyond specific moments of time space.⁵⁹

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing both information researchers and practitioners today is that of acknowledging this complexity: developing new approaches to research that move beyond a narrow focus on ‘mind’ and allow us to gain more holistic insights into people’s individual and collective sense-making. From these insights may emerge new ideas about what it means to be an information professional in the 21st century

Notes

1. B Dervin & M Nilan ‘Information Needs and Uses’ Annual Review of Information Science and Technology. 21 1986 pp3-33.

2. R Savolainen ‘Incorporating Small Parts and Gap-bridging: Two Meta-phorical Approaches to Information Use’ The New Review of Information Behaviour Research 1 2000 pp35-50.

3. I Seidman Interviewing as qualitative research : a guide for researchers in education and the social sciences New York Teachers College Press 1998.

4. M Foucault The Archaeology of Knowledge London Tavistock 1972.

5. M Foucault Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison London Allen Lane 1977.

6. M Foucault Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 London Harvester Press 1980.

7. P Rabinow The Foucault Reader Harmondsworth Peregrine Books 1984.

8. J Derrida Acts of Literature New York Routledge 1992.

9. J Derrida Deconstruction in a Nutshell: a Conversation with Jacques Derrida New York Fordham University Press 1997.

10. Bernd Frohmann ‘The Power of Images: A Discourse Analysis of the Cognitive Viewpoint’ Journal of Documentation 48 1992 pp365-386.

11. S Talja ‘Constituting “information” and “user” as research objects: a theory of knowledge formations as an alternative to the information-man theory’ in P Vakkari, R Savolainen & B Dervin (eds) Information Seeking in Context London Taylor Graham 1997 pp67-80.

12. M Olsson ‘Discourse: A New Theoretical Framework for Examining Information Behaviour in its Social Context, TD Wilson & DK Allen (eds) Exploring the Contexts of Information Behaviour - Proceedings of the 2nd Information Seeking in Context Conference Taylor Graham London 1999.

13. M Olsson (a) ‘Meaning and Authority: the Social Construction of an ‘author’ among Information Behaviour Researchers’ Information Research, 10(2) 2005 paper 219 available at http://InformationR.net/ir/10-2/paper219.html.

14. M Olsson ‘Power/Knowledge: the Discursive Construction of an Author. Library Quarterly. 77 (2), pp219-240 2007.

15. Rabinow op. cit., p4.

16. DR Dickens & A Fontana Postmodernism and social inquiry. New York Guilford Press 1994.

17. T Wilson ‘Information Behaviour: an Interdisciplinary Perspective’ Information seeking in context : proceedings of an International Conference on Research in Information Needs, Seeking and Use in Different Contexts, 14-16 August, 1996, Tampere, Finland P Vakkari R Savolainen and B Dervin London Los Angeles Taylor Graham 1997 pp39-53.

18. Foucault 1972 op. cit.

19. KE Pettigrew F Fidel & H Bruce ‘ Conceptual Frameworks in Information Behaviour’. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 2001 pp 43-78.

20. R Savolainen ‘Information Behavior and Information Practice: Reviewing 2016 the “Umbrella Concepts” of Information-Seeking Studies’ Library Quarterly 77 (2) 2007 pp109-132.

21. H Julien ‘Where to from here? Results of an Empirical Study and User-July centred Implications for Information Design’ Exploring the Contexts of 28 Information Behaviour T D Wilson and D K Allen London Taylor Graham 00:54 1999 pp586-596.

22. T Wilson ‘Human Information Behaviour’. Informing Science 3 1 2000 pp49- at 55.

23. T Wilson ‘ Information needs and uses: fifty years of progress?’ Fifty Years of Information Progress: A Journal of Documentation Review. B. Vickery (ed.) London ASLIB: 1994 pp15-51.

24. Julien op. cit.

25. N Belkin ‘The cognitive viewpoint in information science’ Journal of by Information Science 16 1990 pp11-15.

26. J Krikelas ‘Information-seeking behavior: patterns and concepts’ Drexel Library Quarterly 19 1983 pp5-20.

27. DEllis ‘Modelling the Information-Seeking Patterns of Academic Researchers: a Grounded Theory Approach’ Library Quarterly 63 4 1993 pp469-486.

28. P Ingwersen Information Retrieval Interaction London Taylor Graham 1992.

29. C C Kulthau ‘A Principle of Uncertainty for Information Seeking.’ Journal Of Communication 49 4 1993 pp339-355.

30. Wilson 1997 op. cit.

31. Dervin and Nilan op cit.

32. Frohmann op. cit.

33. Talja op. cit.

34. Julien op. cit.

35. Frohmann op. cit., p379.

36. Julien op. cit., p586.

37. ibid., p586.

38. Talja op.cit., p77.

39. Wilson 2000 op. cit.

40. Julien op. cit.

41. Dervin and Nilan op. cit.

42. Pettigrew, Fidel & Bruce op. cit., pp53-54.

43. Frohmann op cit.

44. R Savolainen ‘ The sense-making theory: reviewing the interests of a user-centred approach to information seeking and use’ Information Processing & Management 29 1 1993 pp13-28.

45. Savolainen 1993 op. cit., p23.

46. Dervin and Nilan op. cit., p15.

47. B Dervin ‘On Studying Information Seeking and Use Methodologically: The Implications of Connecting Metatheory to Method’ Information Processing & Management 35, 1999 pp727-750.

48. Savolainen 1993 op. cit., p26.

49. Savolainen 2007 op. cit., p109.

50. ibid., p120.

51. Rabinow op. cit., p418.

52. Focault 1977 op. cit.

53. Dervin 1999 op. cit.

54. M Olsson ‘Making Sense of Sense-Making: Information Behavior Re-searchers Construct an ‘Author’. Canadian Journal of Information & Library Science. 29 (3), 2005 pp315-334.

55. Olson 2005a op. cit.

56. Dervin 1999 op. cit., p740.

57. C C Kuhlthau ‘The Role of Experience in the Information Search Process of an Early Career Information Worker: Perceptions of Uncertainty, Complexity, Construction and Sources’ Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50(5) 1999 pp399-412.

58. Bertram Brookes ‘The Foundations of Information Science. Part 1: Philo-sophical Aspects’ Journal of Information Science 2 1980 pp125-133.

59. Dervin 1999 op. cit.