Information Behavior

Recent developments in areas such as digitization and networking are resulting in entirely new ways for creating, distributing, storing and using knowledge. The information chain is becoming a digital chain. This is true both for the distribution of knowledge content from authors to users, and for the exchange of knowledge within organizations. Digital libraries and digital publishing are examples of these developments, as is the increasing interest in knowledge management. Information science is an area of research which provides answers to the many questions and problems arising from these developments.

Information Science and Knowledge Management aims to document developments in this subject and to bring together insights derived from research in it. The series focuses on three topic areas: theory, developments in the information chain and organizational and management issues.

Information behavior has emerged as an important aspect of human life, however our knowledge and understanding of it is incomplete and underdeveloped scientifically. Research on the topic is largely contemporary in focus and has generally not incorporated results from other disciplines.

In this monograph Spink provides a new understanding of information behavior by incorporating related findings, theories and models from social sciences, psychology and cognition. In her presentation, she argues that information behavior is an important instinctive sociocognitive ability that can only be fully understood with a highly interdisciplinary approach. The leitmotivs of her examination are three important research questions: First, what is the evolutionary, biological and developmental nature of information behavior? Second, what is the role of instinct versus environment in shaping information behavior? And, third, how have information behavior capabilities evolved and developed over time?

Written for researchers in information science as well as social and cognitive sciences, Spink's controversial text lays the foundation for a new interdisciplinary theoretical perspective on information behavior that will not only provide a more holistic framework for this field but will also impact those sciences, and thus also open up many new research directions.