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The purpose of this paper is to lay a theoretical foundation for identifying operational information units for library and information professional activities in the context of scholarly communication.

The study adopts a deduction-verification approach to formulate a typology of units for scholarly information. It first deduces possible units from an existing conceptualization of information, which defines information as the combined product of data and meaning, and then tests the usefulness of these units via two empirical investigations, one with a group of scholarly papers and the other with a sample of scholarly information users.

The results show that, on defining an information unit as a piece of information that is complete in both data and meaning, to such an extent that it remains meaningful to its target audience when retrieved and displayed independently in a database, it is then possible to formulate a hierarchical typology of units for scholarly information. The typology proposed in this study consists of three levels, which in turn, consists of 1, 5 and 44 units, respectively.

The result of this study has theoretical implications on both the philosophical and conceptual levels: on the philosophical level, it hinges on, and reinforces the objective view of information; on the conceptual level, it challenges the conceptualization of work by IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records and Library Reference Model but endorses that by Library of Congress’s BIBFRAME 2.0 model.

It calls for reconsideration of existing operational units in a variety of library and information activities.

The study strengthens the conceptual foundation of operational information units and brings to light the primacy of “one work” as an information unit and the possibility for it to be supplemented by smaller units.

Based on the assumption that information access disparity is a highly complex phenomenon demanding integrative explications that heed both structure and agency, the purpose of this paper is to outline the theoretical background against which endeavours to develop such explanations can be planned.

The study is based on a close reading of: existing explanations of information access disparity; research of other library and information science (LIS) issues that have demonstrated conscious attempts to bridge structure and agency; and cross-disciplinary integrative theories that have served as foundations for LIS research. Explanatory power of the first and applicability of the latter two are critically assessed; lessons for future research are drawn.

The examination shows that efforts to develop integrative theories for information access disparity are emerging but remain indistinct; integrative frameworks for other LIS phenomena exist but are developed primarily by adopting concepts from cross-disciplinary theories and are, therefore, both enabled and constrained by them. It also shows that cross-disciplinary integrative theories contribute to LIS by exporting the general integrative theorising approach and a range of specific concepts but, owing to their limitations in dealing with information-specific issues, their adequacy for explaining information access disparity cannot be assumed.

The study demonstrates that a promising way forward for developing integrative theories of information access disparity is to follow the general integrative approach, but to ground related concepts and propositions in empirical data alone, i.e., to begin the journey of integrative theorising theory-free.

This study aims to investigate how understanding of objective knowledge (as defined by Karl Popper) is experienced by the knowledge recipient and the role that information plays in such understanding.

Husserl's phenomenological approach is applied to a sample of undergraduate students' lived experiences of understanding, collected through diaries and interviews.

This study finds that understanding of certain objective knowledge develops as the knowledge appears and eventually gives itself to consciousness through the information conveying it; different degrees of givenness of the knowledge in consciousness is experienced by the mind as different levels of understanding; a relatively solid understanding is achieved when the knowledge emerges as an erected knowledge-object in consciousness. Understanding of complex objective knowledge requires not only adequate amount (dose) of information but also corroboration of manifold information sources and formats.

The findings of this study apply to the understanding of objective knowledge as defined by Popper. Further research is needed to examine other types of understanding.

This study informs educators and LIS professionals the typical phases in the lived experience of understanding objective knowledge, and the role of information in facilitating the understanding; it urges the two professions to take such experience into consideration when designing courses and information products/services, respectively.

Drawing on Husserl's phenomenological approach, this study provides an intuitive account of understanding of objective knowledge, and clarifies a number of conceptual confusions within LIS concerning understanding. It may also have some cross-disciplinary relevance for reflecting education objectives and explaining the Aha! experience in psychology.

This study aims to examine the potential of Information Ethics (IE) to serve as a coherent ethical foundation for the library and information science profession (LIS profession).

This study consists of two parts: the first part present IE’s central theses and the main critiques it has received; the second part offers the authors' own evaluation of the theory from the LIS perspective in two steps: (1) assessing its internal consistency by testing its major theses against each other; (2) assessing its utility for resolving frequently debated LIS ethical dilemmas by comparing its solutions with solutions from other ethical theories.

This study finds that IE, consisting of an informational ontology, a fundamental ethical assertion and a series of moral laws, forms a coherent ethical framework and holds promising potential to serve as a theoretical foundation for LIS ethical issues; its inclusion of nonhuman objects as moral patients and its levels of abstraction mechanism proved to be particularly relevant for the LIS profession. This study also shows that, to become more solid an ethical theory, IE needs to resolve some of its internal contradictions and ambiguities, particularly its conceptual conflations between internal correctness, rightness and goodness; between destruction, entropy and evil; and the discrepancy between its deontological ethical assertion and its utilitarian moral laws.

This study alerts LIS professionals to the possibility of having a coherent ethical foundation and the potential of IE in this regard.

This study provides a systemic explication, evaluation and field test of IE from the LIS perspective.

This study aims to contribute to the clarification of core concepts in information experience research and to the consolidation of information experience as a distinctive research object.

This study adopts a series of techniques from Wilson's toolkit of concept analysis.

This study finds that there exist tensions between different uses of the term information experience, giving rise to two fundamentally different conceptions of this particular human experience which this study names, respectively, the posterior conception and the a priori conception. It also finds that it is linguistically more useful, practically more consonant with LIS's concerns and unitarily more consistent to define information experience following the a priori conception. It postulates that information experience can be defined as a person's subjective, pre-reflective living through of his/her life as an information user in the information sphere of the lifeworld.

If adopted by future research, the concept proposed in this study is likely to push information experience research toward a more prominent phenomenological turn on the one hand, and a return to conventional LIS concerns on the other.

The clarified concept may help user experience librarians and system designers to see the relevance of information experience research for their work more clearly.

By identifying, comparing and discussing different existing uses of information experience, and by suggesting a redefinition of the concept, this study has brought the core concepts of information experience research to a new level of clarity, and has verified information experience as a distinctive object for LIS research.

This study aims to build an integrative framework for explaining society's information access disparity, which takes both structure and agency as well as their interactions into consideration.

It adopts a qualitative survey design. It collects data on the development of 65 individuals' information access through interviews, and analyzes the data following grounded theory principles.

A theoretical framework is established based on seven constructs and their relationships, all emerging from the empirical data. It rediscovers practice as the primary structural force shaping individuals' information access, hence society's information access disparity; it shows, meanwhile, that the effect of practice is mediated and/or interrupted by four agentic factors: affective responses to a practice, strategic move between practices, experiential returns of information, and quadrant state of mind.

It urges LIS researchers to go beyond the embedded information activities to examine both the embedded and embedding, beyond actions to examine both actions and experiences.

It calls for information professionals to take a critical stance toward the practices they serve and partake in their reforms from an LIS perspective.

The framework provides an integrative and novel explanation for information access disparity; it adds a number of LIS-relevant concepts to the general practice theories, highlighting the significance of embedded information activities in any practice and their reverberations; it also appears able to connect a range of human-related LIS theories and pinpoint their gaps.

This paper examines the general value to users of a range of electronic journal functions and their usefulness in the specific context of the SuperJournal Project. For the evaluation of each of the functions three types of data were analysed in relation to each other and in light of other contextual data: logged data of usage, survey data on user satisfaction, and survey data on the perceived importance of the function. The analysis shows that basic browsing, printing and search make up the core functions of electronic journals; other functions, such as saving of bibliographic data, alerting, customising, links with external resources and communication, serve as peripheral functions. The usefulness of both the core functions and the peripheral functions in a specific service is influenced by various implementation factors. However, it is the realised usefulness of the core functions which determines the use of a service.

Following the assumption that studies of information inequality need to be based on precise discrimination between society’s information rich and poor and against the context that a mechanism for such discrimination is still lacking, the purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of establishing a holistic informational measurement.

It does so by developing a measurement based on the conceptualization of the individual as an information agent and his/her information world as his/her characterization. The development procedure consists of four steps: operationalization of the theoretical constructs and the initial drafting of the questionnaire instrument; revisions of the questionnaire based on pilot tests with small groups of people; weighing of the questionnaire items for the purpose of calculating index-type variable scores; formal test of validity and reliability.

The resulting measurement consists of eight variables corresponding to eight theoretical constructs of an individual’s information world, each being measured by a group of questionnaire-based items which, in turn, generate an index-type score as the variable’s value. Validity and reliability tests show that the measurement is, on the whole, able to distinguish the information poor from the information rich and to measure individuals consistently.

The study demonstrates that it is possible to distinguish the information rich and poor by informational measurement in the same way as to distinguish economic groups by income, ethnic groups by race and intelligence groups by IQ; and that such a measurement has arguably multifaceted value for information inequality research.

On the basis of a twenty‐two month transaction log of SuperJournal and using K‐Means cluster analysis, this paper classifies a spectrum of user behaviour with electronic journals into a typology of eight categories of user (or eight patterns of use): the searcher, the enthusiastic user, the focused regular user, the specialised occasional user, the restricted user, the lost user, the exploratory user and the tourist. It examines the background and experience with SuperJournal of each type of user to illuminate its formation. The examination shows that the contents (both coverage and relevance) and ease of use of a system as they were perceived by the user were the most significant factors affecting patterns of use. Users’ perceptions of both factors were affected by a range of intervening factors such as discipline, status, habitual approach towards information management, availability of alternative electronic journal services, purpose of use, etc. As any service is likely to attract a great variety of users, so will it lead to differing patterns of use. This paper demonstrates the need for a service to meet the requirements of users with these varied patterns.