Information behaviour: an interdisciplinary perspective

This paper reports on a recent review of the literature of "information behaviour" as it is studied in a variety of disciplines, other than information science. As a result of the review, areas of research interest to information science are identified and a general model of information behaviour is proposed. The extent of the!iterature on information needs and information-seeking behaviour within the field of information science has been recorded on a number of occasions as extending into several thousand reports and journal papers (see, e. information science does not have a monopoly on research in these fields. Several disciplines are concerned, to some extent, with understanding how people seek and make use of information, the channels they employ to gain access to information, and the factors that inhibit or encourage information use. These include: the study of personality in psychology; the study of consumer behaviour; innovation research; health communication studies; organizational decision-making; and information requirements in information systems design. Each discipline has its own reasons for exploring what will be called "information behaviour", but it is the claim of this paper that all can be embraced by a general model from which all may learn and which may serve to integrate studies for the benefit of future research in a variety of fields. It must be stressed that the disciplines mentioned above are not the only fields that could have been included in the review. Mass media research includes much relevant work, as does communication studies in general. However, time did not allow for coverage of these areas and, in any event, it became evident as the review of the literature progressed, that the heart of the subject lies in work in psychology and sociology and a great deal of what is done consists, in essence, of applied psychological and sociological research. In general, the literature from the field of information science itself was excluded from the review, although occasional exception is made for research that adopts a model from one of the other areas and to draw attention to some similarities between information science approaches and those in other disciplines. The paper begins by presenting a general model of information-seeking behaviour, which is then used to analyse the literature from fields outside information science in terms of: the *This paper is based on a review of the literature in the fields studied, with a small grant from the British …