Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- 1 Introduction
- PART 1 BASIC CONCEPTS
- PART 2 WHAT DO WE KNOW OF INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR?
- PART 3 DISCOVERING AND USING KNOWLEDGE OF INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR
- 8 Research approaches
- 9 Research methodologies in action
- 10 Using knowledge of information behaviour to design information systems
- 11 Conclusion
- Appendix: Defining ‘information’ and ‘information behaviour’
- Index
10 - Using knowledge of information behaviour to design information systems
from PART 3 - DISCOVERING AND USING KNOWLEDGE OF INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- 1 Introduction
- PART 1 BASIC CONCEPTS
- PART 2 WHAT DO WE KNOW OF INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR?
- PART 3 DISCOVERING AND USING KNOWLEDGE OF INFORMATION BEHAVIOUR
- 8 Research approaches
- 9 Research methodologies in action
- 10 Using knowledge of information behaviour to design information systems
- 11 Conclusion
- Appendix: Defining ‘information’ and ‘information behaviour’
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Knowledge of people's information behaviour is potentially useful for:
• helping people to become smarter – helping them to develop knowledge and skill in relation to finding, evaluating and using information in pursuit of fulfilling their information-related needs
• helping us design and develop smarter tools – tools which can incorporate and make use of knowledge of information behaviour in order to behave more intelligently and provide more effective support for the people who use them, in pursuit of fulfilling their informationrelated needs.
Helping people develop and improve their own information behaviour skills is the prime concern of information literacy activity. Part of this entails developing awareness of the limitations of information systems and working to compensate for these via human ability.
THINK!
Clearly, we can use knowledge derived from research into information behaviour to help people become smarter – to teach them to avoid strategies and habits that research suggests are ineffective, and to adopt those that research suggest are more productive.
But can you think of ways in which we might be able to incorporate such knowledge into search tools and other information systems themselves – in order to develop smarter systems?
The design of effective information systems entails enabling them to compensate as far as possible for the frailties of human abilities. At the simplest level, a computer-based search system is able to store, sort and retrieve volumes of information simply impossible for a human to even begin to handle. But human input is obviously necessary in terms of telling the system what to search for, and evaluating the results.
However, in recent years information system designers have been able to leverage much more subtle knowledge of people's information behaviour in order to provide more sensitive forms of support. Such information behaviour knowledge includes awareness of the importance of allowing users to choose between different ways of exploring an information space – for example broad-based exploratory browsing or specific topic search, and of the importance of recognizing different levels of uncertainty relating to information needs at different stages of exploration.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Introduction to Information Behaviour , pp. 217 - 236Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2015