Information Experience: Approaches to Theory and Practice

Information behaviour scholarship has evolved over the years from a simplistic to a more complex understanding of people’s interaction with information. Whereas research was previously focused on how people search for information in online catalogues and full text databases, current research is focused on the role information has in the lives of individuals. Due to this paradigm shift in information behaviour scholarship, researchers have come to realise that people’s interaction with information is subjective, individualistic, imprecise, uncertain and fluid. While grappling with these complexities, scholars continuously reflect on the role of information in more holistic ways.

The manner in which people experience information in their lives has caught the attention of information behaviour scholars. The idea with Information experience is to open up scholarly discourse and opportunities to examine people’s lived-world experiences and their information life-worlds. As such it represents a “collective awareness” of information experience in contemporary research and explores the research potential thereof. The editors believe that research focusing on information experience emphasises the multidimensional nature of people’s engagement with information. They also believe that information experience embraces two dimensions: information experience as a research domain and information experience as a research object.

Different conceptual perspectives or lenses can be used to study information experience. The behavioural, phenomenological or sociocultural lenses have been used to date for this purpose. These perspectives supported researchers in determining whether interpretations of information experience are associated tasks, feelings associated with information, lived experiences, socio-cultural experiences, ways of learning, sense-making and decision-making.

When the research lens moves to information-sharing, information-seeking, information-literacy and information-practice related topics, information experience is viewed as a research object. The editors (p. 10) noted that other research objects such as individual and collective information experience, variation in information experience or information experience associated with particular practices, activities, concepts or skills can also be associated with information experience as a research object.

Studying information experience is significant to both theory and practice. To date, information behaviour research has been concerned in determining what information and which information systems were used – that is, information that could possibly be used to improve information services. This is contrary to information experience research focused on gaining insights into what people consider as being important. This type of research focus can open up an understanding of information experiences in different settings and enable practice to respond to changes in their environments.

The book is subdivided into seven sections in which individual authors theorise information experience, report on different information experiences (i.e. the experiences of individuals and of communities) and address organisational and professional information experience. Finally, it also addresses learners’ information experience.

Information experience truly opens new research avenues for researchers interested in information behaviour research and provides the opportunity for researchers to strengthen research ties. A very useful index concludes the volume.