Citation - Wilson, T. D. (1994). Information needs and uses: fifty years of progress, in: B.C. Vickery, (Ed.), Fifty years of information progress: a Journal of Documentation review, (pp. 15- 51) London: Aslib. [Available at http://informationr.net/tdw/publ/papers/1994FiftyYears.html]

• three research issues in Information Science research field
  • user studies –> information use
  • information need
  • information seeking behavior

• history of user study
  • 1948 - the Royal Society Scientific Information Conference (UK) (1916, 20s-40s): study in Library system
  • 1958 - International Conference on Scientific Information: scientist information seeking research
  • 1976 - Centre for Research in User Studies (CRUS), University of Sheffield: British Library R. & D. Department

• history of information seeking behavior
  • Library Surveys
  • User-centered studies
• FAILURE (failure to find relevant materials)
• Information use (query-as-use, how-many/what-docs-be-used)
  • by citation
  • policy research: information use for policy decision
• Information transfer/exchange
  • “this topic has rarely been the subject of specific investigations”
  • 1966 - Allen: laboratories information (MIT)
  • 1991 - Schrader: business information exchange (Policy research)
• user satisfaction

• methodology
  • system
  • person-centered, cognitive approach (Belkin, Dervin, Wilson)
  • phenomenological perspective - Schutz:
    • “individuals construct their own social 'world' from the world of appearances around them”
    • “all of the devices we create to organize the cognitive structures of the world (libraries, retrieval systems, encyclopaedias, etc.) are socially constructed and help the individual to construct his or her own 'meanings'.”
    • “We can see information needs, therefore, as derived from the individual's attempts to make sense of the world (as Dervin), and information-seeking behaviour as almost always frustrated in some degree by the division between the meanings embedded in information systems and the highly personal meaning of the information-seeker's problem.”
    • [note]: Wilson only use Schutz's perspective to interpret seeking behavior, not using his social action theory as the methodology base of information behavior.
  • information-seeking-behavior model

• other discipline

file link - Google Schloar, XXC