Appendix: Defining ‘information’ and ‘information behaviour’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2018
Summary
It was noted in Chapter 2 that many existing definitions in the literature of the key terms ‘data’, ‘information’, ‘knowledge’, ‘behaviour’ and ‘information behaviour’ leave room for uncertainty, in that there is sometimes variation between them, and often they do not provide sufficient elaboration to enable the reader to answer the sort of more probing questions necessary for a robust understanding of the precise extent and limits of each. Such questions include the following:
• Many definitions specify that ‘information’ is data that is structured and interpreted to render it meaningful. But when we gather and analyse ‘interview data’ this is surely not devoid of structure and meaning, so why do we not speak of ‘interview information’? Why does what is a widely accepted definition of ‘data’ and ‘information’ seem to break down here?
• Cloud patterns and the sound of rain are data capable of being meaningfully interpreted – for example, to indicate current and future weather. As such they constitute potential information. But does ‘information behaviour’ include behaviour relating to potential information (i.e. data with potential to be meaningfully interpreted) as well as actual information (data that has been meaningfully interpreted)? If so, does this mean that information behaviour is concerned with processing all items of data that are potentially capable of being meaningfully interpreted which reach our senses? This would imply that information behaviour includes mental processes including seeing, hearing, touching, feeling, perceiving and thinking. How then does it differ from basic psychology?
• Many definitions contrast ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’, information being external to a person (often existing in recorded form such as text or pictures), which the person processes and internalizes as knowledge (i.e. integrates within their own knowledge structure). Yet many definitions include ‘information use’ as a component of information behaviour. To the extent that a person has to understand information (internalize it) before being able meaningfully to use it (as opposed simply to repeating it without understanding) it is surely knowledge rather than information. So does ‘using information’ imply only unthinking verbatim use? Surely we should rather talk of ‘using knowledge’? But if we do, this can include almost any aspect of our thinking and acting, since anything we think entails using our knowledge. Should information behaviour thus embrace any field of intellectual activity? How is it different from, say, politics, history, psychology or engineering?
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- Introduction to Information Behaviour , pp. 245 - 248Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2015