Human Information Behavior Context
In the 1970s,the concept of information behavior gradually began to establish its position in the vocabulary of researchers focusing on information needs, seeking, and use.
[IBPractice, p.113]
The concept of information behavior consolidated its position as an umbrella concept in the 1980s.
[IBPractice, p.114]
While researchers use various definitions of information behavior, for our purposes we define it as the study of how people need, seek, give, and use information in different contexts, including the workplace and everyday living.
[IBLitFrameworks, p.44]
Information Behavior is the totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information, including both active and passive information seeking, and information use. Thus, it includes face-to-face communication with others, as well as the passive reception of information as in, for example, watching TV advertisements, without any intention to act on the information given.
Information Seeking Behavior is the purposive seeking for information as a consequence of a need to satisfy some goal. In the course of seeking, the individual may interact with manual information systems (such as a newspaper or a library), or with computer-based systems (such as the World Wide Web).
Information Searching Behavior is the ‘micro-level’ of behavior employed by the searcher in interacting with information systems of all kinds. It consists of all the interactions with the system, whether at the level of human computer interaction (for example, use of the mouse and clicks on links) or at the intellectual level (for example, adopting a Boolean search strategy or determining the criteria for deciding which of two books selected from adjacent places on a library shelf is most useful), which will also involve mental acts, such as judging the relevance of data or information retrieved.
Information Use Behavior consists of the physical and mental acts involved in incorporating the information found into the person's existing knowledge base. It may involve, therefore, physical acts such as marking sections in a text to note their importance or significance, as well as mental acts that involve, for example, comparison of new information with existing knowledge.
In all of the above definitions data is subsumed under information, that is, data may or may not be information depending upon the state of understanding of the information user.
[HIBHistory, p.49-50]
In all of this, the term knowledge is avoided, on the grounds that knowledge is knowable only to the knower. It cannot be transmitted – only information about the knowledge I have can be recorded and accessed by another person, and that information can only ever be an incomplete surrogate for the knowledge. Hence, knowledge management systems are nothing of the kind – they are, at best, information systems, just as information systems in the past used to be nothing but data-processing systems – and, in some cases, still are.
[HIBHistory, p.50]
There is a human information condition just as there is a human condition. Library and information science and its subfield, human information behavior is a social science that is reacting and adapting to the changing human information condition.
[HIBDiversity, p.33]
It is our hypothesis that information use is a lead-in or connected to what information behavior is if it is thought of as a whole, multidimensional concept.
[HIBDiversity, p.29]
Human information behavior is a construct in which to approach everyday reality and its effect on actions to gain or avoid the possession of information.
[IBLitFrameworks, p.56]
Humans construct their HIB processes as a series of tasks, including an embedded interplay of information topic, information behaviors, and related tasks. For example, embedded between telephoning and computing tasks, an information seeker co-ordinates many tasks when looking for medical information. Therefore, multitasking information behavior research is a significant area of study.
[HIBMultitasking, p.151]
HIB is more complex than the consideration of information tasks in isolation from people’s other tasks. Understanding and modeling multitasking information behaviors require an understanding of the co-ordination and interplay between information seeking/foraging/sense-making, organizing, and using tasks.
[HIBMultitasking, p.151]
Research in human information behavior has primarily focused on the individual in general and in relationship to tasks, computer-based information systems, or social situations.
[IBGroupWork, p.463]
As illustrated in previous research in human information behavior, knowledge about the organization, goals and tasks is required to develop a deep understanding of information behavior in context.
[IBGroupWork, p.465]
