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II Conceptual Constructs and Themes in Information-Seeking Behavior Researchers in library and information science (LIS) who study human information interaction (HII) focus on the area of human information behavior (HIB). Similar to scholars in most branches of the sciences, they wish to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon. Research questions might be general, such as, Why do people look for information? How do they browse? What do they consider when they determine relevance? Or, questions can be highly specific, such as, How do female students from an inner-city high school look for health information about sleep deprivation? For a study to contribute to LIS, the researchers must have a clear understanding of the reasons for carrying out the project. That is, investigators want to have explicit and specific answers to the questions: Why am I asking this particular question, and what impact do I expect the study to have? In effective research projects, the answers to these questions shape the specific research questions and the research method employed. Since LIS has one foot in theory and another in practice (and a big gap in between), an LIS researcher must be clear, for herself and others, where her contribution would lie—in research, practice, or in both—in order to provide a meaningful contribution. This is particularly important in this field because it does not have the characteristics of traditional disciplines. Such disciplines already have their own schools of thought and the research approaches associated with each. A researcher then needs only to identify the school to which he belongs, and his general goals and possible contributions become apparent. LIS, as a new field, has not yet developed stable research traditions ; therefore, every research project has to define its purposes. Moreover, several disciplines are defined by the type of their contributions and the set of research methodologies used. LIS—as an area within information science—is a problem-based field. Because its goal is to investigate the various facets of the interaction between people, information, and technology, the types of contributions to both 46 Part II research and practice and the research methodologies that can be used are numerous. This is one of the attractive attributes of LIS, but at the same time it requires high accuracy and clarity in the reasons for conducting a study and the expected contribution it will make to the field. Yet it is not uncommon for an LIS study to claim to increase our understanding of the studied HIB phenomenon, and justly so, but neither the researcher nor his audience can see how the study’s insights actually contribute to research or to practice. “Deepening understanding” is a contribution only when it is clear what impact such an understanding has the potential to have on the field, regardless of the magnitude of the change it may bring—whether minuscule or groundbreaking. To help define the area of HIB, various scholars have created conceptual constructs, focusing mostly on information-seeking behavior. The first chapter in this part is dedicated to some of these constructs. One building block in the definition of an area is the themes that are central to the field’s scholarship. Central themes in HIB have been shaped by changes in both research techniques and information behavior that have been afforded by the introduction of digital technology. The Effect of New Technologies on HIB Research Since the introduction of digital information technology has arguably been the most important revolution since the invention of printing, scholars in several fields have been studying its effects on the individual and on society. The widespread use of this technology, and specifically that of the World Wide Web, brought new developments to research in HII as well. Most notable are the growth of new research areas and the increasing involvement in HII of researchers from various fields within computer science and engineering. The field of information retrieval (IR), for example, was born when the prospect of using computers to store and retrieve information was first recognized, yet before it was operationally realized. Human-computer interaction (HCI) and personal information management (PIM) are other examples of fields that responded to phenomena related to the use of digital technologies;1 both became increasingly relevant with its growth. In information science, the area of HIB established itself as a genuine field and received its name only after the spread of digital information systems, even though research in the area had been carried out before the introduction of new...

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