[0:00]Hello class. I am going to talk to you today about theory of information and about information behavior. So to start with, we need to just talk about what information is. Information can be the message conveyed by the use of a medium of communication or expression. It could be all the facts, conclusions, ideas, and creative works of the human intellect and imagination that have been communicated, formally or informally, in any form. It could be the recognition of patterns in the world around us, or it could be any difference you perceive in your environment or within yourself. So that leaves it leaves it pretty open for us to interpret information the way that we would like to. So we do different things with information. we might have an information need, which is a recognition that your knowledge is inadequate to satisfy a goal that you have. So you recognize that you have some sort of gap in your knowledge, which would give rise to a search for an answer. Um, information seeking is a conscious effort to acquire information in response to a need or gap in your knowledge.
[1:25]So it takes place, usually takes place when you recognize some sort of gap in your knowledge, then you proceed to information seeking and it is purposeful, it's an active or an intentional behavior. Information behavior then encompasses information seeking as well as the totality of other unintentional or passive behaviors, as well as purposive behaviors that do not involve seeking, such as actively avoiding information. So information could be information seeking, but it also could be the avoidance of information, like say you know that something is wrong with you, instead of like going to webmd and looking up what it could possibly be, you actively avoid doing that. There are lots of different models of information seeking behavior. We are going to look at three, I believe. Um, and models of information seeking behavior describe and attempt to explain circumstances that predict actions by people seeking to find information. So they look at people who have an information need and begin information seeking and try to predict what they will do when they begin information seeking. So this is Wilson's first model. So Wilson starts with an information user who has a need, which may or may not stem from his or her level of satisfaction with previously acquired information. So, that need leads the user into different forms of information seeking behavior. So they may make demands on information systems or on other information sources, and those demands will either lead to success or failure. In Wilson's model, failure is a dead end. Failure doesn't go anywhere. In other models, we'll see that failure leads to other things. But here failure doesn't, doesn't go anywhere. Um, if you have success, then you will put that information to use. It will lead you to satisfaction or non-satisfaction with the information, which may lead back to another need, or it could also lead to information transfer. And this is an important aspect of Wilson's model, is that information is then exchanged with other people, which is what he calls information transfer. In the course of information use and seeking behaviors, so information is also transferred to other people. That's an important part of the model. The second model that we're going to look at is Krekeles's model. Krekeles's model starts with two separate actions, information gathering and information giving. And these two actions lead us to some sort of needs creating event or environment. So it's the gathering or giving of information that gets us to recognize that there is a gap in our knowledge, that we have something, a need. Um, and our needs can be either be deferred or they can be immediate. So needs that are immediate, we will go to some sort of information source, which could be internal or external. Um, an internal source would be like our memory or some sort of direct structured observation that we have. An external source, on the other hand, is either going to be interpersonal contact, so you're going to ask someone for information, or it's going to be recorded, like some sort of literature, a book, or an article, something like that. Um, there are some needs that we might have that are deferred. And when we defer our needs, then we resort back to information gathering. Um, we may look to our personal files, to our memory, in order to assess whether or not how we can meet that information need. The third model that we're going to look at, is the Berry Picking model, or the dynamic model. Um, this is, this is actually my favorite model of information seeking. So, what happens here is that the standard model of information seeking process contains an underlying assumption that the user's information need is static, and the information seeking process is one of successfully refining a query until all or only those documents relevant to the original information need have been retrieved.
[6:04]So, what, what is being said here is that when you go about trying to fulfill your original information need, when you find some kind of information, your need may be partially fulfilled, and you may, your search may go in another direction that you had not anticipated to begin with.
[6:40]So, you can see there that this has separate statuses of queries, so query zero, query one, query two, and in between those queries are some sort of information that has been retrieved. Um, the second point is that the searcher's information needs are not satisfied by a single final retrieve set of documents, but rather by a series of selection and bits of information found along the way. So this is in contrast to the assumption that the main goal of the search process is to hone down the set of retrieved documents into a perfect match of an original information need. So it isn't likely that your needs are going to be fulfilled by one specific set of documents, and you're going to have one single information need. It's much more likely that you're going to find one document and your need will shift, the information gathering will shift in you'll have a different query that you're looking at. That is the Berry Picking model. So, there, we also have some information seeking theories to look at. Um, this one is, this one, I think, will will ring true with a lot of you. Um, the principle of least effort, which was pioneered by George Zipp. And what it says is that each individual will adopt a course of action that will involve the expenditure of the probably least average of his work, aka the least effort. So what this says is that you will, in order to fulfill your information need, use as little effort as possible to fulfill that need. So the professional will ask his or her nearest co-worker. The artist uses the nearest tools. You consult an older or closer resource, one that you're more familiar with, instead of a more current one. You'll use interpersonal sources, like your friends or family versus authoritative sources. Um, this, I, I find this to be true, and I hadn't really thought about it until I'd come across the theory, but it it makes sense. The second information seeking theory that we're going to look at is sense-making theory, which was pioneered by Brenda Dervin. And what sense-making is is, it's a set of processes that's initiated when an individual or an organization recognizes the inadequacy of their current understanding of events. So, it's an active two-way process, you fit data into a frame or mental model, or you fit the frame around the data. So it's it's trying to make sense of the way that we understand, that our understand our systems. We recognize that we have a gap in our knowledge, we acquire new knowledge, and what we do with that knowledge is we either use it, we put that into our existing frame of understanding, or we change our frame of understanding to fit that data. Um, and when there is no adequate fit, when you can't fit the, when the two pieces of information that you have don't fit together, the data may either be reconsidered or an existing frame may be revised. Now this is especially important when we think about, um, our students. Um, we, we look at them and we say, well, what are they doing? Are they going are they, they have one piece of information, and they have another piece of contradictory information. How are they going to put those two things together? We really need to think about that when we're transferring information to students. So, there are ten myths of information seeking. The first myth is that only objective information is valuable. That's not true. Many people rely on friends and family for information. In fact, for most tasks and decisions in life, people will tend to satisfy settle for the first satisfactory solution to a problem, rather than the best solution. And often the first satisfactory solution is something that's going to be subjective. It's going to come from a friend or family. You say, Mom, what do you think about this? And your mom will give you an answer, and you say, okay, that sounds good. The second myth is that more information is always better. This is also not true. More too much information can lead to information overload, which will explore a little bit later on. Information overload can cause people to ignore relevant information. If you have too much information, you don't know where to start, you may ignore the problem. The third myth is that objective information can be transmitted out of context. This is also not true. We often need context to understand the meaning or the relevance of information. Small facts transmitted out of context might be ignored or forgotten because we can't see how they fit into the big picture. Four, information can be only acquired through formal sources. So, as we mentioned in myth number one, people often use friends and family as information sources. Usually those people aren't formal sources or aren't authoritative sources. Um, we rarely turn to formal sources, instead we prefer to rely on the combined experiences of our peers and our family. Five, there is relevant information for every need. Really we have needs that information can't satisfy, like hunger, for instance. Um, you could probably eat books, but I don't think they have very many very much nutritious value. Um, we need shelter, we need food, we need love, and those things are always put before informational needs. Um, if you're interested about this, you can see Maslow's hierarchy of needs for more information. Six, every need situation has a solution. This is also, not true, especially in the library world. There's often a disconnect between what a patron says that he or she wants and what they actually want. They may not be able to articulate what it is that they really want. Um, and sometimes the information given doesn't provide the patron with the understanding or the answers he or she seeks. You may be able to provide them with information, but they may not be able to understand that information. Seven, it is always possible to make information available or accessible. When we consider the amount of information that we're producing on a daily basis, we can see that this isn't also not true. Um, and the needs of the public change very frequently. Um, it isn't possible to make all information available and accessible. Um, for example, it's probable that someone has done a study on the amounts of goat per square acre in North America, but it is certain that it will be difficult to easily find that information, unless you're an intensely expert on goat research. Eight, functional units of information, such as books or TV programs, always fit the needs of individuals. An individual book or TV program will not fit all of the needs of an individual. So think back to that Berry Picking model of information seeking. Sometimes we need a little bit of information from here and some from there in order to solve our one information need. Or when we find one thing, our informational need might change. So it's not usually the case that one informational unit will have everything to meet our information need. Nine, individual situations can be ignored in addressing information seeking and use. Really, it is often the individual's definition of the situation that shapes his or her needs, as much as the real situation itself. Context is important. We need to know what the situation is in order to understand where the information need is coming from and how it has been shaped. Last, but not least, people make easy, conflict-free connections between external information and their internal reality. It would be nice to think that every time a person read or heard a piece of information that they interpreted correctly and changed their point of view. It's much more likely that people hear and and disbelieve or ignore information that doesn't fit into or conflicts with their worldview or mental model. Think about Brenda Dervin's sense-making theory. We have to be able to fit it into our informational schema, or we won't be able to use that information at all. So, quickly, I want to talk about information overload. So, information overload is something that can interfere with information seeking. Um, it's a state of affairs where an individual's efficiency in using information in their work is hampered by the amount of relevant and potentially useful information available to them. It is usually associated with a loss of control over the situation and feelings of being overwhelmed. Maybe it's something you are suffering from right now. I hope not, but it might be.
[15:46]So, just to give you an example of how we can understand information overload, um, the weekly a weekly edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in 17th century England. The English language of the late 20th century contains about 50,000 words, five times more than in Shakespeare's lifetime. The collection of the large US research libraries doubled between 1876 and 1990. Over 1,000 books were published each day across the world during 1990. And that was like twenty years ago. More information has been created in the past 30 years than in the past previous 5,000 years. The number of documents on the internet doubled from 400 million to 800 million from 1998 to 2000. That's only two years. It would take over 200,000 years to read all the internet, allowing 30 minutes per document. So, this is, um, this is a few statistics just to show you how much information has exploded. And also our avenues to information. Um, so these statistics are from an article published in 2008. Um, the global information industry shows that in 2008 there were 12 gigabytes of information produced daily for the average worker or three terabytes of information per worker per year. So, that is a ton of information. So there are different kinds of information overload, or they can lead to different, different conditions. Uh, one is information anxiety, which is a condition of stress caused by the inability to access, understand, or make use of necessary information. There is library anxiety, which is a type of anxiety which leads to a sense of powerlessness when beginning an information search in a library and feeling lost, unable to find one's way around, and afraid to approach the library staff. This is something that our students are probably going to experience, especially when they start doing research projects. They might be feeling some library anxiety. So you are going to need to mediate that and find a way to get around it. Infobesity is a situation of personal information overload. Um, and the article that I got this from said that it's akin to feasting on fast food. So, it's like it's because of Facebook and Twitter and other social media sources that we just get too much personal information coming from all different directions. Satisficing is a way of coping, so it's taking just enough information to meet a need, rather than being overwhelmed by all of the information available. Um, satisficing must be carried out rationally. There must be some sort of clear rationale as to why decisions are being taken, why you're taking in this information and not that. Because if that's not the case, then and one must expect that often it is not, then your behavior is reduced to information avoidance rather than satisficing. So, some solutions to information overload include time management, desk management, critical thinking, better information organization, and avoidance of "push" technology. Push technology is like email. It is when information is deliberately pushed out to you, rather than you going out to seek it. So, an information literate person has a sound knowledge of the world of information, approaches information critically, and has a personal information style that facilitates his or her interaction with the world of information. I am hoping by the end of this course you are fast and well on your way to becoming an information literate person.
