Information needs

Information need

The purpose of a library or an information system is of course to fulfill some needs for documents and information for users or potential users. Such needs may, for example, be related to educational activities, to research activities, to professional activities, to recreation activities, to cultural activities or to personal development.

It is important that need is not mistaken for demand. The demand for information or documents may be low, for example, because the library is seen as inaccessible by the users. Still, the needs exist. An information need may be more or less recognized by the users (cf., ignorance). This differentiation between "a demand" and "a need" is well recognized in the literature of Library and Information Science (LIS). However, deeper analysis and consequent action is seldom taken based on this insight. Mostly are needs still confused with demands, probably because information needs seem less open to empirical investigations.

Tom Wilson (1981) and (2005) is aware of the difficulties in the concept of information need and suggests, that it is abandoned and replaced with the term information-seeking behavior". He writes (2005, p. 32): ". . . the term ''information-seeking behavior" should be adapted as behavior is observable, whereas needs being internal mental states, are not". I believe several things are wrong with this statement:

First, information needs are not "internal mental states". This is a mistaken understanding related to the subjectivity of the cognitive view and the concept of ASK ("Anomalous State of Knowledge"). A realist understanding is quite different: If a person is in a problematic situation for which an effective solution exist, then the documents which inform about that solution are relevant whether the user recognize this or not. The user needs the documents, but this need is not an individual mental state. It is something that a third part may recognize or claim is needed. To say that students have to learn mathematics, for example, is to claim that they will encounter situations in which mathematical knowledge is relevant and needed. This is the case whether or not the children recognizes this need. (If information systems should be based on users' opinion of what is relevant, this would correspond to the writing of textbooks based on students wants).

Second, Wilson's (2005) quote is an expression of a behaviorist point of view, which few people today defend. Behaviorist thoughts dominated 1915-1970, from 1970 cognitivism replaced behaviorism as the main school of thought. The so-called cognitive revolution in psychology and other sciences was in fact a scene with exactly this behaviorist understanding of avoiding the study of internal mental states.

Third, if we replace the term "information needs" with the term "information-seeking behavior" we might be able to study this behavior, but we still face the problem to determine whether this behavior is an expression of needs, or just expressions of demands? We are back to where we started.

What users believe they need represent their subjective understanding of their need. This subjective understanding is reflected in their information-seeking behavior. Even if this behavior may be studied objectively it is still not useful as criteria for what is needed. What is needed is something that is able to solve the problem behind the users' behavior.

When we go to real life problems, there are usually different opinions about how they should be understood and how they should be addressed, including different opinions about what information is relevant to solve the problem. In science there are different theories. Each theory implies a different answer about what information is relevant and needed. Such questions are NOT decided by psychological investigations but by empirical and theoretical arguments. That is why the study of different epistemologies are important in LIS. In public libraries are culturally important book normally obtained because it is important for libraries to inform their users of their existence. The idea of information need is thus not based on an empirical understanding but on a normative understanding of the importance of both classical and modern literature.

Information needs are related to problems and an important issue is how problems are understood, delimited and formulated. University teachers generally advice their students about the formulating of research problems to be treated in theses. This process of problem formulating is intimately related to information needs: are there too much or too little information about a topic to make it researchable within the given time-frame and competencies? Library and information specialists may learn much about information needs by considering this concept in relation to writing studies and research studies such as Bazerman (1994) and Allwood & Bärmark (1999).

In cultural studies the concept of a canon is well known. This is another example that what is needed from libraries and information services is not decided by psychological or cognitive studies but by regarding historically and collectively established views of what is important. Of course different opinions exist, but that does not justify methodological individualism in LIS-studies.

Sundin & Johannisson also describe the absence of the social dimension in the understanding of information needs within LIS:

"Tom Wilson [1981] showed, in spite of his interest in primarily psychological aspects of the concept and even though he wanted to avoid the concept of information need itself, how both socially and individually oriented aspects of information needs should be considered. In Wilson’s own writing, social aspects could be exemplified by his deployment of the concept of “dominance”. Wilson stated that: Because the situations in which information is sought and used are social situations, however, purely cognitive conceptions of information need are probably inadequate for some research purposes in information science, but not for all. [1981, p. 9]
Despite Wilson’s argument that was presented so many years ago, social aspects of information needs and relevance assessments have not been explored to any great extent. As a symptomatic indication of this state of affairs, individual aspects are very prominent when Donald Case [2002] in his recent book summarizes IS literature. For example, Case’s book does not include any discussion at all of the social aspects of relevance assessments. This exclusion is not stated explicitly. Still, different epistemological approaches always – explicitly or implicitly – mediate specific views on how information needs are formed and satisfied by information, which is assessed as relevant from this specific viewpoint." (Sundin & Johannisson, 2005, p. 109).

There is not necessarily a mental dimension associated with having an information need. A bicycle tube may need air. But it is not the bicycle that experiences this need, it is the owner of the bicycle. In the same way we attribute information needs to other people, which they do not experience themselves, or on which they may disagree. For example may an employer or a teacher ascribe information needs to their employees or students which may differ from the needs that these people experience. An information need may be compared with an educational need. Such a comparison removes much of the mystique from the concept of information needs. It also makes it clear that information needs like educational needs is connected to different political goals and understandings. It also makes it clear that information needs cannot be uncovered by 10.000 empirical studies as seems to have been assumed in the dominant tradition in LIS.

Robert S. Taylor's theories (1968) about the mental development of information needs have been rather influential in LIS He describes the development of information needs as a relatively independent development "in the head" of the users. It has a continuous development and go through some phases termed Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4, going from an "unconscious need" over a "conscious need" to a "compromised need". Taylor's theory have been discussed by Hjørland (1993, 1997). It is argued that information needs probably do not develop continuously because a given piece of information may disturb the under standing of the problem underlying the need. It is also claimed that what develops "in the head" is not the primarily the need but knowledge about the problem-area, which causes the need. The implication for Hjørland (1993/1997) is also that the concept of knowledge interests (known from Habermas, 1968) is a better framework for the understanding of information needs and their development compared to the cognitive framework.

Pors (1990, p. 42) found that user-studies typically find that users are overall satisfied by library services. Their answers may, however, be explained by a low level of expectations. Library users normally have little knowledge about what they might expect because they have little knowledge, which again determines their answers in user studies. Even if user studies apply "objective" research methods, their results may misleading. Perhaps we face a paradox: The "objectivist", positivist methods are less suited to the determination of information needs than are more "subjective", "soft", humanistic methods.

In LIS studies of users' information needs have been with us for half a century. It is claimed that such studies form the basis for the design of systems and cervices. But do they? And if they do, are the services then better compared to cervices that have not applied such studies?

The skeptics may point to examples in which this is not the case. When Dialog, for example, introduced its retrieval service in 1972, this took place in fierce competition with another system, Orbit. Orbit did made an empirical investigation of the needs for databases of the potential users, while Dialog found that a supermarket approach should be taken with as many databases as possible in the system. Dialog came first and quickly won the market, while Orbit as number two never got foothold and had to give up.

Literature:

Allwood, C. M. & Bärmark, J. (1999). The role of research problems in the process of research. Social Epistemology, 13(1), 59-83.

Bazerman, C.(1994). The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplines. 5th edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Case, D. (2002). Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior. Amsterdam: Academic Press.

Green, A. (1990). What do We Mean by User Needs. British Journal of Academic Librarianship,5(2), 65-78.

Habermas, J. (1968). Erkenntnis und Interesse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. (Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro to: Knowledge and human interests. 2nd. [English] ed. London: Heinemann Educational, 1978.

Hjørland, B. (1993). Informationsbehov og deres udvikling. IN: Emnerepræsentation og informationssøgning. Bidrag til en teori på kundskabsteoretisk grundlag. Göteborg: Valfrid. (Pp. 172-201).

Hjørland, B. (1996). Informationsbehov - en analyse af et vanskeligt begreb. Bogens Verden. http://www.kb.dk/guests/natl/db/bv/bv-96/4-96/inf.htm (In Danish).

Hjørland, B. (1997): Information Seeking and Subject Representation. An Activity-theoretical approach to Information Science. Westport & London: Greenwood Press.

Ingwersen, P. (1992). Information Retrieval Interaction. London: Taylor Graham. Available at: http://www.db.dk/pi/iri/files/Ingwersen_IRI.pdf

Line, M. B. (1974). Draft Definitions: Information and Library Needs, Wants, Demands and Users, Aslib Proceedings 26(2), 87.

Pors, N. O. (1990). Døde bøger og tomme hylder. Om evaluering og styring af bibliotekets materialebestand. Valby: Danmarks Biblioteksforenings Forlag. (In Danish).

Roberts, N. (1975). Draft Definitions: information and Library Needs, Wants, Demand and Users: A Comment, Aslib Proceedings 27(7), 308-13.

Stone, S. (1982). Humanities Scholars: Information Needs and Uses. Journal of Documentation, 38, 292-312.

Sundin, O. & Johannisson, J. (2005). The Instrumentality of Information Needs and Relevance. I F. Crestani & I. Ruthven (eds.). Information Context: Nature, Impact, and Role: 5th International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Sciences, CoLIS 2005, Glasgow, UK, June 4-8, 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3507. S.107-118. Available at: http://www.kult.lu.se/bivil/olof/colis.pdf

Taylor, R. S. (1968), Question-negotiation and information seeking in libraries. College and Research Libraries, 29, 178-194.

Wersig, G. (1973). Informationssoziologie. Hinweise zu einem informationswissenschaftlichen Teilbereich. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.

Wilson, T. D. (1981). On User Studies and Information Needs. Journal of Documentation, 37(1), 3-15. Available at http://informationr.net/tdw/publ/papers/1981infoneeds.html

Wilson, T. D. (2005). Evolution in Information Behavior Modeling. Wilson's model. IN: Fisher, K. E., Erdelez, S. & McKechnie, L. (eds.). Theories of information behavior. Medford, NJ: Information Today. (Pp. 31-36).

Birger Hjørland

Last updated: 20-08-2007

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