Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Information and information seeking
- 2 Information seekers and electronic environments
- 3 Information-seeking perspective and framework
- 4 Foundations for personal information infrastructures: Information-seeking knowledge, skills, and attitudes
- 5 Analytical search strategies
- 6 Browsing strategies
- 7 Designing support for browsing: A research and development perspective
- 8 The continuing evolution of information seeking
- 9 Future directions and conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
4 - Foundations for personal information infrastructures: Information-seeking knowledge, skills, and attitudes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Information and information seeking
- 2 Information seekers and electronic environments
- 3 Information-seeking perspective and framework
- 4 Foundations for personal information infrastructures: Information-seeking knowledge, skills, and attitudes
- 5 Analytical search strategies
- 6 Browsing strategies
- 7 Designing support for browsing: A research and development perspective
- 8 The continuing evolution of information seeking
- 9 Future directions and conclusion
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Knowledge is recollection.
PlatoThe best way to stay young is to have a bad memory.
Miles DavisInformation seeking, like learning and problem solving, demands general cognitive facility and special knowledge and skills and is influenced by attitudes and preferences. General cognitive facility – what is commonly called intelligence – includes our abilities to remember, make inferences, and monitor our intellectual activity. Special knowledge and skills of three types also interact to determine information-seeking performance: knowledge and skills related to the problem domain, knowledge and skills specific to the search system and setting, and knowledge and skills related to information seeking itself. Attitudes such as motivation, confidence, tenacity, tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty, curiosity, and preferences for social interaction and media influence when and how we apply information-seeking knowledge and skills. Taken together, these types of knowledge, skills, and attitudes compose our personal information infrastructures. Information problems are always embedded in a context that determines which facets of our personal information infrastructure are brought to bear in a specific situation. Personal information infrastructures develop as we gain knowledge of the information-seeking factors and skills in managing the information-seeking process. Information professionals apply their general cognitive abilities to building knowledge and skills concerning sources and systems that contain information, techniques for mapping users' needs to tasks, and strategies for seeking and representing information. Knowing what knowledge and skills are useful in manual environments and today's electronic environments will lead to better designs for future information systems and to better training for professionals and end users alike.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Information Seeking in Electronic Environments , pp. 61 - 75Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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