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The aim of this paper is to describe the Polish empirical studies of information barriers. The focus is to highlight the hierarchy of barriers, and the relation between demographic variables (sex, age, discipline etc.) and perception of barriers.

After a deep literature review some empirical studies have been conducted. Respondents were divided into groups in terms of: sex, field of study (social sciences, human sciences, natural sciences and technical sciences), age, science degree and year of study. In analysis of data two statistical methods: analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a chi‐square test (χ²) were used.

The phenomenon of information barriers is very common, encountered by around 80 per cent of users. The most troublesome barriers were barriers connected with libraries. The study showed that the sex variable had varied the respondents' answers to the greatest extent. The women perceived information barriers as a more serious problem than men (p<0.001). With regard to types of discipline, the faculty group found information barriers more troublesome in such disciplines as humanities and social sciences than in natural or technical sciences (p=0.001).

The hierarchy of barriers obtained from the study is related to a particular environment, a given group of users, the equipment of home library.

Studies of this subject may prove valuable in identifying people that are likely to experience difficulties in access to information.

The knowledge of the relation between demographic variables and perception of barriers, in earlier literature, was fragmentary. Findings may lead to a better understanding of the information barriers phenomenon by librarians and library users as well.

The purpose of this paper is to examine collegiate information barriers and perceptions of academic library climate among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) college students in the USA.

The primary method used for this investigation was an online crowdsourced survey of 105 participants who attended two and four-year colleges in the USA. The questionnaire used free word association where participants shared information barriers encountered on colleges’ campuses. Responses from each questionnaire were interpreted using open coding.

Information barriers around sexuality continue to be a challenge for non- heteronormative information seekers on college campuses. One-third of students had distinctive information needs around their sexuality and experienced information barriers from both the institution and social stigma. The study reveals an evolution in sexual minority students’ sense of self, which has moved beyond the binary identity of gay/lesbian explored in previous studies; students identified bisexuality as a salient information need, and described a campus environment that often erased bisexuality. The academic library was described as an information barrier due to inadequate sexual minority-related resources.

Academic librarians as well as higher education professionals, such as recruitment/admissions officers, student counseling services, student health and student affairs, can leverage the results of this study to help establish a more inclusive and welcoming information environment that empowers students for academic and personal success.

A limited number of studies in information science have focused on sexual minority college students’ information behaviors and even fewer on information barriers. This study presents new insight and deeper understanding of the collegiate information environment of LGBT identified students in the USA.

This study is a part of the doctoral dissertation that proposes concrete measures to improve health-care information outreach program for rural health-care professionals in primary and secondary health care in Punjab, Pakistan. This study aims to report on the barriers to accessing and using online health-care information from rural settings of the Punjab province of Pakistan.

A cross-sectional survey was conducted in primary and secondary health-care settings in the Punjab province of Pakistan. The study’s population consisted of the rural primary care physicians (PCPs), who were geographically dispersed across 2,873 different remote health-care settings across Punjab. These practice settings included 2,455 basic health units, 293 rural health centers, 89 tehsil headquarter hospitals and 36 district headquarter hospitals.

Limited internet access, non-availability of required equipment and lack of training facilities were identified as the main barriers. PCPs’ gender, previous enrollment in post-graduation programs and type of health-care facility were significant factors in the perceived barriers related to both “non-availability of required equipment” and “inadequate training facilities on the use of information resources”.

The findings of the study hold some important practical implications for different stakeholders. This study identifies and addresses the barriers to accessing and using health-care information for PCPs in rural settings. The success of the health-care information outreach program in Punjab, Pakistan, should rely on the eradication of these barriers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first large-scale study in Pakistan that assesses the barriers and proposes ways to overcome these barriers to effectively access and use health-care information.

The purpose of this paper is to explore information behaviour and the information barriers transgendered people encounter. This study produces new information about the information needs in the construction of the transgendered identity, the changing of the information needs during this phase, utilized information sources, information sharing and barriers encountered in the information behaviour displayed by transgendered people.

Semi-structured interviews were used to explore the information behaviour of 12 transgendered participants. This study represents a phenomenological-hermeneutic approach. A qualitative content analysis was used in analysing the data with categories derived from previous research and research questions.

Serendipity played an important role at the beginning of the participants’ information seeking phase: the young individual would not have terms corresponding to his or her experience because of the invisibility of the transgender phenomenon in the culture. The barriers to seeking information were psychological, demographic, role-related or interpersonal, environmental or source characteristic. Fear was apparent as a barrier in the surrounding culture often caused by expectations, attitudes in the family environment and people around. Source characteristic barriers were related to the lack of terms and vocabulary required to seek information and also the lack of the information itself. Information about transgender and gender minorities was essential in building up a clear gender identity, and the most relevant information sources of this sort of information this were other transgendered people and the experience-based information they had shared.

The information behaviour of transgendered people has not been previously studied. In this study a model of information behaviour and information barriers was made. The model includes individual’s information practices, sources of information and also the barriers affecting information behaviour.

People face barriers and failures in various kinds of information seeking experiences. These are often attributed to either the information seeker or the system/service they use. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why individuals fail to fulfill their information needs in all contexts and situations. It addresses the limitations of existing studies in examining the context of the task and information seeker’s strategy and seeks to gain a holistic understanding of information seeking barriers and failures.

The primary method used for this investigation is a qualitative survey, in which 63 participants provided 208 real life examples of failures in information seeking. After analyzing the survey data, ten semi-structured interviews with another group of participants were conducted to further examine the survey findings. Data were analyzed using various theoretical frameworks of tasks, strategies, and barriers.

A careful examination of aspects of tasks, barriers, and strategies identified from the examples revealed that a wide range of external and internal factors caused people’s failures. These factors were also caused or affected by multiple aspects of information seekers’ tasks and strategies. People’s information needs were often too contextual and specific to be fulfilled by the information retrieved. Other barriers, such as time constraint and institutional restrictions, also intensified the problem.

This paper highlights the importance of considering the information seeking episodes in which individuals fail to fulfill their needs in a holistic approach by analyzing their tasks, information needs, strategies, and obstacles. The modified theoretical frameworks and the coding methods used could also be instrumental for future research.

This paper seeks to organize the extensive field and to compile the complete list of information limits.

A thorough analysis of literature from the field beginning with the 1960s up to the present has been performed.

A universal typology of information limits has been proposed. A list of barriers mentioned in the literature of the subject has been compiled.

The term “information limits” is not commonly used.

The complete list of information limits with bibliographical hints (helpful for future research) is presented.

Medical doctors seek information in order to satisfy their demanding everyday work practices and professional development endeavours. Information seeking is a continuous goal-related process that has impact on how they perceive and experience their job. The purpose of this paper is to explore the association of doctors’ awareness of medical practice information needs (MPIN), their frequency of using online information resources and the barriers they encountered during information seeking with their overall job satisfaction. More specifically, the research examined the mediating role of these information seeking related variables (information needs, online scholarly resources and information barriers) on doctors’ overall job satisfaction.

The study employed a questionnaire survey of 138 medical doctors working within the context of a University Hospital in Greece. The survey took place between February and March 2014. To test the hypotheses the authors conducted regression analysis, hierarchical moderated analysis and bootstrapping using SPSS macro developed by Preacher and colleagues.

The statistical analysis found that higher awareness of MPIN had an indirect effect on doctors’ overall job satisfaction when they used online information scholar resources. In addition, this indirect effect was contingent on information-related barriers.

This study provides evidence for supporting the pivotal role of doctors’ information seeking preferences in fostering job satisfaction. This is an understudied research area that deserves a unique focus particularly with the constantly expanding medical information space that has impact on doctors’ medical practices and professional activities.

The purpose of this paper is to aim at modelling the trails, which are search patterns with several search systems across the heterogeneous information environment. In addition, the author seeks to examine what kinds of trails occur in routine, semi-complex and complex tasks, and what barrier types occur during the trail-blazing.

The author used qualitative task-based approach with shadowing of six molecular medicine researchers during six months, and collected their web interaction logs. Data triangulation made this kind of detailed search system integration analysis possible.

Five trail patterns emerged: branches, chains, lists, singles and berrypicking trails. The berrypicking was typical to complex work tasks, whereas the branches were common in routine work tasks. Singles and lists were employed typically in semi-complex tasks. In all kinds of trails, the barriers occurred often during the interaction with a single system, but there was a considerable number of barriers with the malfunctioning system integration, and lacking integration features. The findings propose that the trails could be used to reduce the amount of laborious manual system integration, and that there is a need for support to explorative search process in berrypicking trails.

Research of information behaviour yielding to different types of search patters with several search systems during real-world work task performance in molecular medicine have not been published previously. The author presents a task-based approach how to model search behaviour patterns. The author discusses the issue of system integration, which is a great challenge in biomedical domain, from the viewpoints of information studies and search behaviour.

This study focuses on specifically women refugees' experiences of accessing information and how sociocultural barriers impact these experiences aiming to broaden the LIS literature of women refugees' information problems from sociocultural aspects. The socioculturally formed roles of a woman can impact the information practices of women refugees or cause certain information problems during the integration process. Hence, the research questions that drive this study are: What kind of information problems might women refugees face in a new host country? What kind of sociocultural barriers influence their information problems? How do they react toward these information problems?

The study is designed based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with eighteen refugee women living in Sweden. The study is a part of a larger study in which authors intend to explore the information practices and integration challenges of almost 20 or more refugee women living in Sweden.

Women refugees face information overload, difficulties in understanding new communication culture and lack of appropriate sources and networks in a new country. These information problems are influenced by sociocultural barriers such as the role of women, national culture of “collectivism”, small-world and lack of information literacy. Women react in certain ways such as, stressing, panicking, quitting the tasks, wasting time and making wrong decisions which negatively impact the integration process.

The research has its limitations as it is conducted with a small group of women refugees, belong to specific Middle Eastern culture and cannot be generalized. Another limitation is that the interviews are conducted in English language (with sufficient language skill). However, conducting interviews in their mother language would have been an advantage.

Practically, the study provides awareness for official and private organizations, volunteers and policymakers dealing with refugees. The stakeholders involved in the societal integration process of refugees, must consider that women refugees are more prone to information problems due to certain sociocultural influences (i.e. “being a woman” and national culture) and need a separate plan than the male refugees. For instance, by increasing and offering intercultural opportunities at workplaces or schools can encourage the wider social networking for women refugees. The programs aiming to reduce the sociocultural differences among women refugees and the Swedes are needed to be included in the integration policy.

The study intends to help the refugees society and the Swedish society overall by improving the integration plan.

The findings related to the information experiences of women refugees have potential implications for research where the value of information in the integration process is explored. The study meets the gap in previous literature by presenting the gender specific views on information problems from sociocultural aspects. The study also provides future directions to understand how women refugees deal with potential sociocultural barriers to information in a new country.

The issue of varying stakeholder expectations has significant implications for successful enterprise information system implementation. This issue becomes more prevalent in e‐government situations where a variety of stakeholders are influenced by inter‐organizational knowledge sharing. This paper presents an exploratory investigation of the diverging and converging expectations of various stakeholders at the initiation of e‐government projects with regard to the benefits of and barriers to interorganizational knowledge sharing.

Survey data were collected from seven cases within the New York State (NYS) government setting. We identified two sets of stakeholder groupings in this paper; core/key project participants and general participants (similar to developer/user stakeholder groupings); and; various organizational participants (state government, local government, non‐profit organization, and private organization stakeholders).

Research results indicated that key participants' expectations were similar to those of general participants/users. Their perceptions converge on the relative likelihood of achieving benefits and relative severity of barriers; although significant differences do exist in discernment of the opportunity for achieving wider professional networks and the magnitude of control‐oriented management. Finally, we found significant differences among stakeholders groups based on the types of organizational membership. Local government stakeholders are considerably less optimistic in achieving goals, and more concerned about a variety of organizational, technological, and financial barriers.

The results provide guidance for e‐government design and implementation strategies that amplify common interests, contend with shared difficulties, and mitigate differences.