User studies continue to be an important area of library research, as studying the information-seeking behavior of specific user groups has contributed to the development of a variety of library services. On university campuses, research into the information-seeking patterns of humanities undergraduates has influenced the design of information literacy programs and reference services. As well, ...

The Internet and electronic marketplaces have profoundly transformed the travel services industry and challenged the traditional value proposition of travel agencies: What is the reason for their existence if information is abundantly available and transactions can be flexibly conducted in direct buyer-seller interactions on the Internet? Traditional travel agencies are struggling to develop ne...

Collaborative information seeking (CIS) has lately produced interesting empirical studies, describing CIS in real-life settings. While these studies explore how and why CIS manifests itself in different domains, discussions about how to study CIS have been scarce. The research area of CIS may, however, benefit from a discussion of methodological issues. This chapter describes the application of...

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...

Introduction. Women are active information seekers, particularly in the context of managing health for themselves and their families. Rural living may present particular challenges and opportunities for women in their health information seeking. Method. Forty women living in a rural part of Ontario, Canada were interviewed using a semi-structured interview guide. They were asked about their hea...

Despite the many implicit references to the social contexts of search within Information Seeking and Retrieval research, there has been relatively little work that has specifically investigated the additional requirements for collaborative information seeking interfaces. Here, we re-assess a recent analytical inspection framework, designed for individual information seeking, and then apply it t...

Knowledge learning is recognized as an important component in people’s search process. Existing studies on this topic usually measure the knowledge growth before and after a search. However, there still lacks a fine-grained understanding of users’ knowledge change patterns within a search process and users’ adoption of different sources for learning. In this on-going project, we are exploring a...

The medical students of Obafemi Awolowo University were assessed for general use of library and for their information seeking behavior. The objectives of the study were to evaluate students’ perception of the demands for locating clinical information; to determine if they sought current information and sources most often used for their current information. Five hundred medical students comprisi...