Information Behaviour and Me

Daniel Quintal is the current Vice-Chair of the CLA – UWO Student Chapter. He is a third term MLIS candidate at the University of Western Ontario, where he also holds a B.A. in History from the affiliated King’s University College. When not trying to wrap his head around information behaviour concepts and database management, he can be found recuperating in a downtown London used bookstore.

 I have been taking a course this term of information behaviour. A multi-disciplinary field of research, it involves the choices, decisions and behavioural patterns of individuals in the activities of information exchange. Not just about retrieving information, it describes people as active agents in a fluid chain of tasks including seeking, using, holding, sorting, and determining outcomes when dealing with information. A number of theories have been made to explain information behaviour, including Zipf’s Principle of Least Effort; Elfreda Chatman’s Life in the Round; and role theory. 

How the field of information behaviour relates to librarianship works for both librarians and patrons. A patron feels there is a knowledge gap which needs addressing, and within context determined by factors such as time, location and availability of sources a visit to the library is needed. Working up the initiative to walk to the help desk, or is in turn met by a roving reference librarian, the patron engages in a reference interview with the librarian. What follows is a sequence of steps enforced by feedback from both parties; the patron narrows down the request and the librarian falls on professional training to check the request within the library’s collective body of knowledge. This continues until the patron is satisfied; this satisfaction may range from being fulfilled entirely or determined by the patron to be “good enough” because the information is accessible and at least somewhat helpful.

 I have been learning over the last few weeks the different approaches people interact with information – the next several weeks will provide a little more sense to human information behaviour! As an aside in my research on the Shannon-Weaver model of information theory, I found one of the co-authors, Claude Shannon, was the inventor of the “Ultimate Machine” .