Emergence, novices, and all things new

Citation

Bawden, D. (2012), "Emergence, novices, and all things new", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 68 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd.2012.27868daa.001

Emergence, novices, and all things new

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Documentation, Volume 68, Issue 4

As this editorial is written, spring has arrived rather dramatically in southern England. Which leads me, naturally enough, to think of new things and emerging entities, and their documentary needs and consequences.

Most obviously we might think of providing the knowledge needed by learners, at all stages and in any subject or topic, and of the need for those learners to have sufficient information literacy (or digital literacy, if you prefer) to acquire and use it. A good deal of attention has also been focused on “novice searchers”, particularly those using web search engines for the first time.

But beyond these extensive and well-studied areas, there is the rather different area of information support for the novice practitioner; the person who, perhaps having studied a topic, now embarks on the practice of a new discipline, activity or indeed hobby. At a time when it is recognised that, in many contexts, the old “job for life” is disappearing and we must all expect to retrain and reskill, when apprenticeships are finding a new popularity, and when new ways of doing things constantly appear, this seems a particularly important topic.

Yet it is one which has been little studied. A recent paper in this journal, examining the information behaviour and needs of novice practitioners in art and design (Mason and Robinson, 2011), is one of the few such studies. Others have looked at newly appointed academic faculty (for example, Tenopir et al., 2009) and at junior entrants in various professions, for example medicine (Urquhart et al., 1999). However, there is no substantial body of literature on this aspect, and reviews, such as Donald Case’s (2007) magisterial survey, do not distinguish this group as a specific object of study.

This is unfortunate. It is all too easy to assume that new entrants to some practice or discipline are, in information terms, essentially the same as the rest of the practitioners of the field. But such studies as have been done show that, although there is certainly a large extent of commonality, there are also distinct differences. Novices have particular needs, particularly for a rapid entry into the informal communication structure of their area, and particular constraints – of knowledge, time, resources, etc. This is an area which, in my view, deserves greater emphasis as an important field of study; and not merely because we want to enable new entrants to an area to become proficient as rapidly as possible. Habits, information-related as much as any other, are set at an early stage; and it is in everyone’s interest that novices start to take full advantage of information resources as soon as possible. This is surely an area in which the much-touted “impact” can truly be claimed, and it deserves much more emphasis as a topic for information research.

David Bawden