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The history of the public library is long and rich, and continues to reflect this institution's initial mission: to respond to the needs of an evolving democratic society. From its early days as a subscription service for the middle-class, through its evolution to become an educational site for the lower-classes and new immigrants, the public library has served as a touch-stone for urban industrial society in North America (Lerner, 1998, p. 138; Shera, 1974). Over the past century, public libraries have evolved to respond to the growing needs of the communities they serve and continue to do so with recent advances in technologies (such as DVDs, electronic books, the Internet, etc.), and with a more global outlook on the ways that people seek and share information. Indeed, the public library's constituents today are exceedingly diverse, including children and adults from a broad range of socio-economic, cultural, and educational backgrounds, all of whom seek information for a variety of personal and work-related purposes. The fact that public libraries have been fulfilling patrons' information needs for well over a century is a testament to their enduring success and versatility as information providers, and also points to the overall effectiveness of public librarians as intermediaries in the provision process.

Originally grounded in library and information science, the majority of information behaviour and information-seeking theories focus on task-based scenarios where users try to resolve information needs. While other theories exist, such as how people unexpectedly encounter information, for example, they are typically related back to tasks, motivated by work or personal goals. This chapter, however, focuses on casual-leisure scenarios that are typically motivated by hedonistic needs rather than information needs, where people engage in searching behaviours for pleasure rather than to find information. This chapter describes two studies on (1) television information behaviour and (2) the casual information behaviours described by users of Twitter. The first study focuses on a specific casual-leisure domain that is familiar to many, while the second indicates that our findings generalise to many other casual-leisure scenarios. The results of these two studies are then used to define an initial model of casual-leisure information behaviour, which highlights the key differences between casual-leisure scenarios and typical information behaviour theory. The chapter concludes by discussing how this new model of casual-leisure information behaviour challenges the way we design information systems, measure their value and consequently evaluate their support for users.

In response to a need for ‘consideration of the conceptual overlap between information seeking and information literacy’ (Julien & Williamson, 2010), this chapter explores their development. Since the 1960s there has been an ongoing stream of research called ‘information behaviour’ (IB). This has taken various forms and shifted its focus in terms of the topic studied and epistemological orientation. Since the 1990s there has been another stream of parallel research focusing on people’s information capabilities called ‘information literacy’ (IL). Both concern the interaction and experience of a person or a group with information. The former focuses on the social, psychological, behavioural and environmental aspects of people’s IB. The latter focuses on the person and the capabilities they need to interact with information which may be studied from a social, psychological, behavioural and environmental perspective. IB has traditionally placed an emphasis on observed or recorded information seeking, within a broad context of factors that may affect behaviour. In contrast, IL research places greater emphasis on specific cognitive and behavioural processes associated with information seeking and use. Both IB and IL throw light on people’s information experience. Over time, shifts in focus have been associated with changes in epistemological orientation. We now see a rich array of approaches for investigating people’s IB and IL. This reflects the multifaceted nature of these domains, that is social, organisational and individual. This chapter charts the relationship between these two fields of research and highlights their complementarity.

In this chapter, I bring a rhetorical genre theory lens to the study of two sets of information activities: information seeking and informing in a clinical setting, and personal information management in the household.

I begin by characterizing each candidate genre and show how it is constituted, created, repurposed, and used. I then show how that genre is embedded within a local genre set. This analysis maps the institutional, interactional, and intertextual connections, showing how generic forms interact with other oral and textual genres within the setting. Finally, I situate the single genre and genre set within the broader genre system to show how individual genres are both socially and intertextually connected with institutions and organizations beyond the local setting.

A genre analysis shows how “information” is accomplished out of the social and documentary practices of participants in particular settings and elucidates the shifting and complex nature of contexts in which information actors operate. Combining three levels of analysis shows how the actions of individuals are locally negotiated but also situated within broader structural constraints and discourse communities. A genre approach therefore offers a window on the elusive concept of “context” in information needs, seeking, and use research.