Information behaviors of elite scholars in the context of academic practice
| Date | 11 September 2017 |
| Published date | 11 September 2017 |
| Pages | 953-973 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2017-0028 |
| Author | Nancy Falciani-White |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Information behaviors of elite
scholars in the context of
academic practice
Nancy Falciani-White
Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Virginia, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to describe the information behaviors in which scholars regularly
engage, in participants’own words wherever possible, and discuss how those behaviors function in the
broader landscape of scholars’academic practice.
Design/methodology/approach –Scholars’information behaviors were investigated using
semi-structured interviews, along with document analysis. Three scholars recognized for significant
contributions to their fields were identified from each of the three major divisions of academia (humanities,
natural sciences, and social sciences) using intensity sampling, for a total of nine participants. Interviews
asked each participant to describe a recent research project from conceptualization to completion, focusing on
how scholars engaged with ideas, information resources, tools, and processes.
Findings –Information behaviors were found to permeate scholars’work from conceptualization through
publication, and included behaviors such as skimming, reading, data collection and analysis, and writing.
Of particularinterestare the specific information behaviorsthat fall intothe broader categoryof informationuse.
Originality/value –This study uses established definitions of information behaviors to broaden the
information behaviors conversation to include the entirety of academic practice. The study shows how
scholars from across the academy engage with information throughout the course of their academic work, not
just when they are engaged in more traditional information seeking activities.
Keywords Information retrieval, Research, Information management,
Generation and dissemination of information, Faculty, Academic libraries, Academic practice,
Information behaviours
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Scholars are in the business of assigning meaning to the numbers, letters, symbols, sounds,
waves, images,and other bits of data that exist or arediscovered, the “raw material produced
by abstracting the world into categories, measures and other representational forms”
(Kitchin, 2014, p. 1). Information is “data rendered meaningful”(Floridi, 2010; Ford, 2015,
p. 11), making information both essentialto, and the purpose of, faculty work. Whilethe work
that scholars engagein during the course of their research is broader andmore complex than
how they interact with or encounter information (Falciani-White, 2016; Palmer et al., 2009),
gaining a better understanding of those information behaviors is a vital component of
understanding research and academic practice. Information behaviors are frequently
associated with information seeking and the scholarship element of the triad of teaching,
scholarship, and service that comprises academic practice (Boyer, 1990). In reality, however,
the ways in which facultyengage with information permeateevery area of academic practice
(Falciani-White, 2016), impacting how scholars decide to pursue a new research path, how
they collect and analyze information related to that project, how they collaborate with other
scholars to refine their ideas, and how they disseminate their work to others in the field.
While the vast literature that has been written on information behavior is not always
consistentin how the term is defined,Fisher et al. (2005) believe that the majority of researchers
who use the phrase espouse the definition of information behavior proposed by Wilson (2000)
to be “the totality of human behavior in relation to sources and channels of information,
including both active and passive information seeking, and information use”(p. 49).
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 73 No. 5, 2017
pp. 953-973
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-02-2017-0028
Received 28 February 2017
Revised 12 July 2017
Accepted 3 August 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
953
Information
behaviors of
elite scholars
Fisher et al. (2005) build upon Wilson (2000) and Pettigrew et al. (2001), defining information
behavior as “how people need, seek, manage, give, and use information in different contexts”
(p. xix). Ford (2015) expands on these definitions by describing information behavior as
engagementwith any or all of the following: perceiving some information-relatedneed, coming
into contact with information potentially relevant to some need, assessing the suitability of
informationin relation to some information-relatedneed, using information or knowledge,and
organizing information for one’s own use, with a focus onthe characteristicsof the information
in termsof its nature, medium,source, and/or mode or circumstances ofits discovery (p. 23).As
similar as thesedefinitions are, this paper will use Ford’s (2015) definition, as its focus on the
characteristics of the information itself is particularly appropriate in the academic context.
Nuances in the definitions availablefor information behaviors arereflected in the research
that exists on this topic. While many studies have explored information behaviors among
faculty in an academic context, few have attempted to articulate all of the information
behaviors with which scholars regularly engage in the course of their work. Research on
specific information behaviors abounds, such as that on information seeking behaviors
(e.g. Bauder and Emanuel, 2012; Borgman et al., 2005; Brown, 1991; Foster,2004; Foster and
Ford, 2003; Ge, 2010; Meho and Tibbo, 2003; Rupp-Serrano and Robbins, 2013; Shen, 2007),
organization (e.g. Diekema and Olsen, 2014; Trace and Karadkar, 2016), or reading (e.g. King
and Tenopir, 1999;Tenopir et al., 2015; Volentine and Tenopir, 2013). Thosestudies that have
looked at faculty information behaviors more broadly may focus on a specific faculty
population, such as those in business (Hoppenfeld and Smith, 2014), education and the
behavioral sciences (e.g. Zoellneret al., 2015), or the humanities (e.g. Bulger et al., 2011). Other
studies fail to define what they mean by “information behaviors,”(e.g. Borrego and
Anglada, 2016) or may choose to use a different term entirely to define the ways in which
faculty engage with information to do their work (Bulger et al., 2011; Palmer et al., 2009;
Zoellner et al., 2015). Still others focus more on the tools faculty are using rather than the
behaviorsin which they are engaged (e.g. Borregoand Anglada, 2016; Ollé and Borrego,2010).
Research in the areas of information behaviors and academic practice continues to
expand as it explores how faculty research is changing in the increasingly more established
digital environment. As it does so, there is a strong need for consistency in the terminology
used to describe faculty interactions with information.
This paper fills a gap in the literature by working within agreed upon definitions of
information behaviors to describe in a single study all the information behaviors with which
scholars in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences may regularly engage, in
participants’own words wherever possible, and discuss how those behaviors function in the
broader context of scholars’academic practice. The result is a series of information
behaviors that represent all of the ways in which scholars engage with information during
the course of their research, regardless of what department they are in, or what topic they
are researching. Because this study explored scholars’research projects in their entirety, the
resulting list of information behaviors is more comprehensive than those usually
encountered in the literature.
Methodology
This researchwas part of a larger project which identified all of the activities and information
behaviors in whichscholars engage during the course of theirresearch (Falciani-White, 2013).
That project focusedon the relationships that existamong those activities and behaviors,and
resulted in a model of faculty academic practice (Falciani-White, 2013, 2016).
Grounded theory was used to identify faculty information behaviors and activities and
analyze the relationships that existamong them. Grounded theory is a strategy “in which the
researcher derives a general, abstract theory of a process, action, or interaction grounded in
the views of participants”(Creswell,2009, p. 13), and it is intended to investigate and explore
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