Relationships between information seeking and context: A qualitative study of Internet searching and the goals of personal development

Navigating complex authorities: Intellectual freedom, information literacy and truth in pandemic STEM information

Traversing scientific information has become increasingly fraught, as the new information landscape allows anyone to access endless information with a few keystrokes. However, those trying to find information, understand authorities and navigate experts need a deeper understanding not only of the information itself, but also of how and why information is shared. Increasingly, questions of expertise, locale and bias are driving the scientific information ecosystem and creating or expanding disinformation, misinformation and propaganda efforts. Librarians are in the centre of this maelstrom of information and are obligated to help people learn to be critical of information. This article presents an illustrative case study, using the example of scientific information around the safety and efficacy of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to demonstrate how modern scientific information sharing is shaped by the ways in which misinformation and fake news spread.

Exploring the context of visual information seeking

Purpose

Information seeking is an interactive behaviour of the end users with information systems, which occurs in a real environment known as context. Context affects information-seeking behaviour in many different ways. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that potentially constitute the context of visual information seeking.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used a Straussian version of grounded theory, a qualitative approach, to conduct the study. Using a purposive sampling method, 28 subjects participated in the study. The data were analysed using open, axial and selective coding in MAXQDA software.

Findings

The contextual factors influencing visual information seeking were classified into seven categories, including: “user characteristics”, “general search features”, “visual search features”, “display of results”, “accessibility of results”, “task type” and “environmental factors”.

Practical/implications

This study contributes to a better understanding of how people conduct searches in and interact with visual search interfaces. Results have important implications for the designers of information retrieval systems.

Originality/value

This paper is among the pioneer studies investigating contextual factors influencing information seeking in visual information retrieval systems.

Information seeking and use in the context of minimalist lifestyles

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe information seeking and use (ISU) within the context of minimalist lifestyles and connect characteristics of living with less to theories of information poverty and resilience.

Design/methodology/approach

Naturalistic methods of inquiry describe minimalist lifestyles in a remote, rural context through semi-structured interviews with 24 adults. Environmental scanning and visual methods extended data collection retrospectively and longitudinally to span almost 118 years of community history. Qualitative thematic coding and analysis proceeded inductively and reflexively.

Findings

Living minimally in this environment results in adaptive strategies that compensate for lack of resources in general, and information resources specifically. Positive psycho-social attitudes such as optimism, creativity, curiosity, resourcefulness, and self-sufficiency continue to be important factors in developing resilience in information seeking practices.

Research limitations/implications

Information poverty is usually defined relatively, and often in relation to formal, macro-level environments. Focussing attention on informal, local level ISU reveals alternate varieties of knowledge, ways of knowing and characteristics that create information resilience in the face of sometimes profound deficits.

Practical implications

Highlights of positive aspects to ISU in this remote, rural context will be of interest to researchers and practitioners serving rural library systems.

Originality/value

This study provides an historical and contemporary glimpse into the ISU patterns of a previously unexamined population and context, those who live minimalist lifestyles in a remote and rural location.

Serendipity and its study

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of serendipity and approaches to its study particularly in relation to information studies.

Design/methodology/approach

– The origins of the term serendipity are described and its elaboration as an exploratory and explanatory concept in science and the social sciences are outlined. The distinction between serendipity and serendipity pattern is explained and theoretical and empirical studies of both serendipity and the serendipity patterns are explored. The relationship between information encountering is described. Empirical studies of serendipity using Citation Classics and other research approaches in information studies are described.

Findings

– The discrepancy between occurrences of serendipity in studies using Citation Classics and reported serendipity in philosophy of science, research anecdotes, information encountering and information seeking by inter-disciplinary researchers is highlighted. A comparison between a process model of serendipity and serendipity as an emergent behavioural characteristic are indicates directions for future research.

Originality/value

– The paper provides and original synthesis of the theoretical and empirical literature on serendipity with particular reference to work in information studies and an indication of the methodological difficulties involved in its study.

An interdisciplinary platform for information behavior research in the liberal arts hobby

Purpose

– The liberal arts hobby is a leisure pursuit that entails the systematic and fervent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the liberal arts hobby as a setting for information behavior research.

Design/methodology/approach

– The method of interdisciplinary translation work is used to relate existing research from the specialties of leisure studies, adult education, and information behavior. Drawing from leisure studies, the liberal arts hobby is presented within the context of the serious leisure perspective, a theoretical framework of leisure. Also, relevant research.

Findings

– The basic informational features of the liberal arts hobby and adult learning project are discussed in terms of three issues of current interest within information behavior scholarship. The issues are: first, social metatheory and the ideal level of analysis; second, time and information behavior; and third, information behavior in pleasurable and profound contexts.

Research limitations/implications

– Research into everyday life, serious leisure and hobbies is extended and methodological tools are provided.

Practical implications

– Information professionals, such as public librarians or systems designers, will have a better understanding of the information experience of a popular hobby group and be better able to meet their information needs.

Social implications

– Awareness and understanding of the liberal arts hobby will be increased across the field of information science, thereby creating a better alignment between the field and society.

Originality/value

– The paper is the first to establish an interdisciplinary starting point for information behavior research in the liberal arts hobby.

The impact of users’ verbal/imagery cognitive styles on their Web search behavior

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of verbal-imagery cognitive styles of information searching behavior of users in using the Web.

Design/methodology/approach

– In all, 44 participants were recruited for this study. The participants’ cognitive styles were measured by using Riding's Cognitive Style Analysis test. Three search tasks were designed based on Kim's search task definitions. Moreover, an individual lab session was arranged and then participants’ memos were analyzed using content analysis.

Findings

– In all, 48 strategies in four categories of behaviors in searching the Web were identified. There were associations between users’ cognitive styles and their information searching behavior. The participants’ selection of the search initiation behaviors varied, so that imagers suffered from more varied initial behavior than verbalizers. The verbalizers tended to search in a narrow area, then broadening the area and following structured navigation and reading behavior to process information, while imagers tended to search in a general area, then narrowing down the search and adopting mixed navigational styles and mixed behaviors to process information. This study revealed that there was a difference in search performance of verbalizers and imagers descriptively, as verbalizers spent more time compared to imagers and imagers visited more nodes than verbalizers for the tasks completion. In addition, the task was an important variable influencing the search performance. Based on the key findings (search initiation behaviors, formulating search queries, navigational behaviors, information processing behaviors), a conceptual pattern of Web searching and cognitive styles is presented.

Research limitations/implications

– The study provides a new understanding of Web users’ information search behavior based on cognitive styles which contributes to the theoretical basis of Web search research. It also raises various questions within the context of user studies

Originality/value

– The paper adopted a mixed approach in the area of information searching on the Web. A valuable contribution lies in the methods developed.

Increasing the authoritativeness of web recommendations using PageRank‐based approaches

Purpose

Web content has been widely used for recommending personal webpages. Despite its popularity, the content‐based approach regards a webpage simply as a piece of text, thereby often resulting in less authoritative recommendations of webpages. This paper aims to propose novel approaches that utilise other sources of information pertaining to webpages to facilitate the automatic construction of an authoritative web recommender system.

Design/methodology/approach

In this research, four approaches that exploit hyperlink structure, web content and web‐usage logs for making recommendations are proposed. The proposed approaches have been implemented as a prototype system, called the authoritative web recommender (AWR) system. An evaluation using the web‐usage logs and the corresponding pages of a university web site was performed.

Findings

The results from the evaluations using empirical data demonstrate that the four proposed approaches outperform the traditional content‐only approach.

Originality/value

This paper describes a novel way to combine information retrieval, usage mining and hyperlink structure analysis techniques to find relevant and authoritative webpages for recommendation.