This book is about an activity that pervades every aspect of our lives. Constantly as we traverse the landscape of people, things and places making up our lives – and even as we dream – we are constantly processing information.

Information is the raw material of knowledge: used effectively it can lead to wisdom. It is the intellectual equivalent of our food. And just as our eating habits and nutritional intake can be good or bad, with concomitant good and bad effects on our physical health, so can the quality of information we acquire, and the effectiveness with which we process it, affect the quality and effectiveness of our intellectual health.

We are constantly bombarded with information – and misinformation. The ability to seek out quality information and to subject it to careful critical scrutiny is more important than ever. More than ever we live in an information-rich environment, with online access to vast stores and the ability of all of us easily to contribute to these stores. But whilst we may all be incredibly information-rich, this does not equate to being knowledge-rich.

The intensity and scope of research into information behaviour has expanded considerably since the 1960s when research interest in how people go about finding information began to take off (Greifeneder, 2014; Wilson, 2010). Since then the use of qualitative to complement quantitative research approaches has grown, as has the scope of the research field more holistically to embrace not only the seeking of information but also its evaluation and use – as well as other kinds of information-related activity such as information avoidance.

The contexts in which information behaviour occurs – and the types of information included in research studies – have also grown in scope to include information behaviour relating to social media, everyday and leisure information use to complement more traditional contexts such as academic, health and commerce and more formal types of recorded information. Parts 1 and 2 of this book attempt to map out major themes relating to what information behaviour is and what we know about it.

However, despite the volume and range of research studies into this complex phenomenon, and the substantial progress made over the years in our understanding of it, much remains to be learned. In particular, we need to develop robust understanding based on a strong combination of quantitative and qualitative studies.