Introduction. The purpose of this paper is to study information types in the context of simple, semi-complex and complex tasks in city administration. Task complexity has proved an important aspect of information seeking practices. Method. Employees of a city administration completed questionnaires when initiating and finishing their work tasks. Questions concerned task complexity, information ...

Introduction. The aim of the paper is to propose new models of information behaviour that extend the concept beyond simply information seeking to consider other modes of behaviour. The models chiefly explored are those of Wilson and Dervin. Argument A shortcoming of some models of information behaviour is that they present a sequence of stages where it is evident that actual behaviour is not al...

The paper presents a grounded theory analysis of 395 user responses to the survey question, “What is the worst song ever?” Important factors uncovered include: lyric quality, the “earworm” effect, voice quality, the influence of associated music videos, over-exposure, perceptions of pretentiousness, and associations with unpleasant personal experiences.

Many researchers in the area of information seeking behavior have highlighted the importance of context in influencing information-seeking behavior. However, few have elaborated on how contextual factors influence information-seeking in practice. This chapter explores the impact of disciplinary traditions of non-western, developing country external environments on patterns of information seekin...

This paper reports the results of two empirical studies which explored the information seeking behaviour of engineering and law students in Ireland. Findings reveal similar patterns in the information seeking behaviour between students studying to become professionals and information seeking patterns of these groups identified in the Leckie et al. model. Students learned their information seeki...

Introduction. This paper presents an exploration of information sharing and trust in a geographically dispersed network of design scholars. Method. The study used a practice theory approach to identify aspects of trust in relation to information sharing. The empirical material consists of 15 in-depth interviews with design scholars from four Nordic countries and field notes from workplace visit...

Xuemei Ge is Metadata Librarian in Brown-Daniel Library at Tennessee State University; e-mail: xge@ tnstate.edu. © Xuemei Ge This article focuses on how electronic information resources influence the information-seeking process in the social sciences and humanities. It examines the information-seeking behavior of scholars in these fields, and extends the David Ellis model of information-seeking...

Numerous studies of engineers information seeking behavior have found that accessibility was the factor that influenced most their selection of information sources. The concept of accessibility, however, is ambiguous and was given various interpretations by both researchers and engineers. Detailed interviews with 32 engineers, in which they described incidents of personal information seeking in...

The Internet has become a popular source of health information. However, in-depth understanding of the information seeking behaviour of online health information is limited. We conducted an experiment to investigate the information needs and behaviours of health information seekers. This paper reports on a model of behavioural patterns drawn on the experimental results, and implications for des...