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Provides the foundation for work accomplished by information professionals. As telework, or working regularly from home using telecommunications technology, is increasingly adopted in the workplace, employees are challenged to maintain the same level of connectivity in their network of information sources. Teleworkers experience a variety of changes in their work situations, as not only is their physical work location altered, but also their means of working changes. Examines ways in which library and information science professionals can facilitate teleworkers’ information access. The information environments of 20 teleworkers and 20 at‐office information professionals with similar jobs are discussed. Researchers have predicted a restructuring of organizations and of information into electronic formats to accommodate work done from home results and reveal that teleworkers still relied heavily on print sources of information. Teleworkers adopted specific strategies for ensuring availability of information in their at‐home work environments, including asking colleagues to send information to them at home. Suggests that library and information science professionals have a vital role to play in teleworkers’ interaction with information. Ways of training library and information science professionals are discussed.

It has tightly been said that scientific research is of no use whatsoever—unless the results are published or otherwise communicated to others. This may be a cliche, but it is one worth repeating, because it is one of the bases of science, and the foundation of information work. Since the beginnings of modern science, after the Renaissance, when the secretiveness of the Middle Ages and the alchemists was swept away, the need for free discussion and intercommunication has been ever more clearly recognized. When, with the advent of the industrial revolution, science, previously an intellectual hobby, became a necessity, the pace of research and invention, and with it the volume of publication, increased and has continued to increase steadily. At the beginning of the nineteenth century we find journals beginning to include short accounts, mostly critical reviews, of papers published elsewhere, but it was not long before the first journals appeared containing only such reviews or abstracts, from which the critical element largely disappeared, and an objective standard was set. This was the first step in information work, and it is important to note that it originated within the scientific field itself, that is, it was performed by scientists on behalf of their fellow researchers.

I think I should at the outset explain something of the origin of this paper, and how it came to be written. As some of you may be aware, an article appeared in the issue of The Engineer for 13th February, 1953, on ‘Library service for industry’. In many respects it was a very useful and informative article, but at one point it claimed that ‘the activities of an information department usually revolve round the library’, the inference being, of course, that in information work the librarian is the ‘king pin’. As I disagreed strongly with that view, I wrote a letter to the editor pointing out what I regarded as an error in the article. Somewhat to my surprise a long correspondence ensued, and showed two rather striking features. The first was that the point I had raised was sidetracked, and there developed an almost bitter argument as to whether or not there is any difference between a librarian and an information officer. The second feature was that nearly all of the correspondents were engaged in technical information work, and almost without exception they assumed that no other kind of information work exists.

This research paper explores the roles of electronic texts in research projects in the humanities and seeks to deepen the understanding of the nature of scholars' engagement with e-texts. The study used qualitative methodology to explore engagement of scholars in literary and historical studies with primary materials in electronic form (i.e., e-texts). The study revealed a range of scholars' interactions with e-texts during the whole research process. It uncovered a particular pattern of information-seeking practices in electronic environments called netchaining and the main types of uses and contributions of e-texts to research projects. It was found that e-texts play support and substantive roles in the research process. A number of influences from electronic environment are identified as challenges and aids in working with e-texts. The study does not have statistical significance. It indicates a need for further research into scholarly practices, training requirements, and new forms of service provision. Study results are relevant for the development of digital collections, information services, educational programs, and other forms of support for the use of technology in research. The results can be also used to inform approaches to text encoding and development of electronic information systems and have implications for organizational and industry policies. The study found a range of scholars' interactions and forms of intellectual engagement with e-texts that were not documented and analyzed by earlier studies. It provides insights into disciplinary variations in the humanities and contributes to the understanding of scholarly change catalyzed by information technology.

The purpose of this paper is to elaborate the nature of everyday life as a context of information behaviour by examining how researchers have approached this issue. To this end, particular attention is directed to how they have characterized everyday life as a constellation of work-related and non-work constituents.

Evolutionary concept analysis was conducted by focussing on 40 studies on the topic. It is examined how the conceptualizations of everyday life and the relationships between work-related and non-work constituents have been evolved since the 1990s. The analysis is based on the comparison of the similarities and differences between the characterizations of the above constituents.

Early conceptualizations of everyday life as a context of information behaviour were largely based on Savolainen's model for everyday life information seeking. Later studies have proposed a more holistic approach to everyday life in times when the boundaries between work-related and free-time activities have become blurred, due to the growing use of networked information technologies and telecommuting. Since the late 1990s, the understanding about the nature of everyday life as a context of information behaviour has become more nuanced; thanks to a more detailed identification of the overlaps of work-related and non-work constituents.

As the study is based on a sample of studies examining the relationships of work-related and non-work constituents, the findings cannot be generalized to concern the contextual nature of everyday life as a whole.

The study pioneers by offering an in-depth analysis of the nature of everyday life as a context of information behaviour.

Both task‐based and work‐oriented research approaches have proved their value in information science research. A task is a workable analytical unit of human activity, which brings the level of explication close enough to cater for individual actions and their consequences. Similarly, work and work roles have been effective concepts at explicating the broad patterns of professional information activity. Major issues of the existing approaches are the difficulty of conceptualising the contexts of tasks and the relatively high level of abstraction of a work level scrutiny. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the concepts of “work”, “work role” and “task” might be integrated into a common research agenda. It is suggested that the explication of work and work roles might serve in providing additional understanding on the formation of the purposes, meanings and values, which guide the shaping of the activities conceptualised as tasks.

The issue is discussed in general with a reference to an empirical study of information work of archaeology professionals informed by the notion of work role.

It is suggested that the broader notions of work and work roles are useful concepts for explicating the context of more specific tasks.

The suggested approach brings together task and work–work role‐based research and provides a basis for exploring human information activity from a broader perspective than before and thus improving the general understanding of why and how information is used as it is used.

The study provides an approach to conceptualise the ways how people work with information and lays the ground for improving information management and organisation practices.

There has been little prior discussion about integrating the task and work‐based approaches. The paper suggests that the explication of work and work roles might serve in providing additional understanding on the formation of the purposes, meanings and values, which guide the shaping of the activities conceptualised as tasks.

Institutional ethnography is a method of inquiry that brings attention to people’s everyday work while simultaneously highlighting broader sites of administration and governance that may be organising that work. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the integration of institutional ethnography in health information practice research represents an important shift in the way that Library and Information Science professionals and researchers study and understand these practices.

This paper first explores the key tenets and conceptual underpinnings of Dorothy Smith’s institutional ethnography, illuminating the importance of moving between translocal and the local contexts and identifying ruling relations. Drawing from a library and information science study that combined interviews and textual analyses to examine the social organisation of family caregivers’ health-related information work, the paper then explores the affordances of starting in the local particularities and then moving outwards to the translocal.

The paper concludes with an overall assessment of what institutional ethnography can contribute to investigations of health information practices. By pushing from the local to the translocal, institutional ethnography enables a questioning of existing library and information science conceptualisations of context and of reappraising the everyday-life information seeking work/non-work dichotomy. Ultimately, in considering both the local and the translocal, institutional ethnography casts a wider net on understanding individuals’ health information practices.

With only two retrieved studies that combine institutional ethnography with the study of health information practices, this paper offers health information practice researchers a new method of inquiry in which to reframe the application of methods used.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that a closer consideration of the notion of work and, more specifically, information work as a sensitizing concept in Library and Information Science (LIS) can offer a helpful way to differently consider how people interact and engage with information and can complement a parallel focus on practices, behaviours and activities.

Starting with the advent of the concept of information work in Corbin and Strauss’ work, the paper then summarizes how information work has evolved and taken shape in LIS research and discourse, both within and outside of health-related information contexts.

The paper argues that information work affords a lens that can acknowledge the multiple levels of effort and multiple processes (cognitive, physical or social-behavioural) related to information activities. This paper outlines six affordances that the use of information work within LIS scholarship imparts: acknowledges the conceptual, mental and affective; brings attention to the invisibility of particular information activities and their constituents; opens up and distinguishes the many different lines of work; destabilizes hierarchies between professionals and non-professionals; emphasizes goals relating to information activities and their underlying pursuits; and questions work/non-work dichotomies established in existing LIS models.

This paper is a first in bringing together the many iterations of information work research in LIS. In doing so, this paper serves as a prompt for other LIS scholars to take up, challenge the existing borders of, and thus advance the concept of information work.

“Bouncing ideas” is a phrase used colloquially to illustrate a way of advancing ideas in the workplace. While described by some as a key part of their information work, it has remained largely unexplored in the information science literature. As a metaphor used to depict information work, it describes a process of working on ideas in conjunction with others. This paper examines how early career academics use the term when describing their academic work.

This paper reports on one of the findings from a larger, in-depth study that examined the information behaviour of early career academics undergoing career transitions, which was carried out using constructivist grounded theory (CGT). CGT provides both a framework for the systematic collection (that included multiple interviews and check-ins with 20 early career academics) and analysis of the data (that consisted of multiple rounds of iterative, inductive coding).

The findings identify the component parts of bouncing ideas, which include three component in-formation activities – information seeking, information sharing and information creation – and are undertaken as cooperative information work (joint work for a shared purpose, but the benefits of the work may not be equal between participants).

Bouncing ideas is proposed as a complex information practice, defined as engaging in a temporary cooperative effort that involves social information exchange in order to gain help and/or support for an intellectual endeavour to create new information. The work identifies that more research into bouncing ideas is needed to more fully explore the distinct component behaviours that take place whilst bouncing ideas and the social conditions that foster this collaborative exchange.