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This study demonstrates how individual paradigms implicate the questions asked, methods used and results drawn in association with a common object of study in human information behavior (HIB) research – the relationship between uncertainty and decision-making.

The author uses textual case studies to examine uncertainty and decision-making through the framework of four paradigms used in HIB research: positivism, cognitivism, collectivism and constructionism and suggests deconstructionism as a paradigm which raises new questions around this topic.

Positivistic approaches to uncertainty are often systems oriented; cognitive approaches are often user-oriented; collectivist approaches are intersubjective; and constructionist approaches blend a subjective and intersubjective research orientation. Deconstructionism raises new questions around ethics and responsibility in relation to decision-making, and the author therefore situates it as a new paradigmatic approach for this topic in HIB research.

Despite the presence of research aimed at recognizing and defining paradigms in HIB research, a comparative micro-examination of how individual paradigms implicate a specific research topic has yet to be conducted. Each paradigm uniquely shapes the ways in which uncertainty and decision-making are characterized, but the four central ones examined here have thus far left out questions of ethics and responsibility as being core elements of decision-making as tied to uncertainty. Therefore, this paper introduces deconstructionism as a paradigm new to HIB uncertainty research, arguing that it provides an important and novel complication of existent research questions and approaches.

This systematic literature review aims to elaborate on the research progress and features of information source preferences to help other researchers attain a more comprehensive understanding of the field.

Following a systematic review protocol, 139 research articles from 11 academic databases were analyzed.

Overall, five separate results were obtained: first, information source horizon theory is the main theoretical foundation of information source preferences research, while other theories have been applied less. Second, information source preference research has strong context sensitivity and involves health, work, consumption, learning, survival and development and emergencies. Third, preference criteria can be summarized into three categories: information characteristics, user characteristics, needs characteristics and corresponding specific criteria. Fourth, information source preferences are influenced by both internal and external factors, including five specific aspects, namely demographics, the user's cognition, the user's affection, capital and contextual factors. Fifth, this field is dominated by quantitative methods and an information horizon mapping method could be applied more.

This study is the first to reveal the general picture of information source preferences. It also elaborates on the characteristics of this field and presents potential development directions.

The outcomes of information behaviours have traditionally been conceptualised as use or effects. The adoption of a sociological stance, based on a practices approach, provides the opportunity to challenge these understandings. The non-Western setting further enhances the possibilities for conceptualising the outcomes of information practices as forms of capital.

This ethnographic study uses a Bourdieusian approach to investigate the information practices of diasporic devotees and monks of a Theravada Buddhist Temple in Sydney, Australia. The insider position of one researcher brought strong insights into the data, while the theoretical approach shared with the other researchers reinforced an outsider perspective.

The Temple’s online sources and personal communication with other devotees provide a diverse range of sources that devotees use in information-based cultural practices and everyday life information practices. These practices lead to outcomes that can be identified as economic, social and cultural capital. Pin or merit emerges as an important outcome of practices which is not easily accommodated by the concept of outcome, nor by Bourdieu’s categories of capital.

Adding to the small number of studies concerned with information practices in a spiritual context, this study shows the value of a Bourdieusian approach in identifying the outcomes of information practices as capital, but highlights the shortcomings of applying Western concepts in non-Western settings. It proposes the possibility of a new form of capital, which will need to be tested rigorously in studies in other spiritual settings.

The PICCH research project contributes to opening a dialogue between cultural heritage archives and users. Hence, the users are identified and their information needs, the search strategies they apply and the search challenges they experience are uncovered.

A combination of questionnaires and interviews is used for collection of data. Questionnaire data were collected from users of three different audiovisual archives. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two user groups: (1) scholars searching information for research projects and (2) archivists who perform their own scholarly work and search information on behalf of others.

The questionnaire results show that the archive users mainly have an academic background. Hence, scholars and archivists constitute the target group for in-depth interviews. The interviews reveal that their information needs are multi-faceted and match the information need typology by Ingwersen. The scholars mainly apply collection-specific search strategies but have in common primarily doing keyword searching, which they typically plan in advance. The archivists do less planning owing to their knowledge of the collections. All interviewees demonstrate domain knowledge, archival intelligence and artefactual literacy in their use and mastering of the archives. The search challenges they experience can be characterised as search system complexity challenges, material challenges and metadata challenges.

The paper provides a rare insight into the complexity of the search situation of cultural heritage archives, and the users’ multi-facetted information needs and hence contributes to the dialogue between the archives and the users.

The purpose of this study is to examine the quality of information in articles in the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, as perceived by readers and content contributors. This study explored several dimensions and characteristics of information presented in Wikipedia by identifying new emerging dimensions in terms of readers’ perceptions of the quality of online information.

Two rounds of online surveys were conducted using a mixed-method approach. In the first survey, the authors conducted content analysis on 197 participants, and in the second survey, the authors conducted factor analysis on 107 study participants. The authors used Qualtrics Panel Services to recruit individuals who read and/or edited the English version of Wikipedia articles and resided in the United States.

The mixed-method approach employed in this study to explore the quality of online information had three core components: users’ perceptions of information quality, content analysis, and exploratory factor analysis of the perceived information quality structure. The study found a new information quality category, social aspect quality. Dimensions include fun, goodness, empowering and user generated.

The results demonstrate the emergence of novel quality attributes for information quality presented online, particularly in social media. Moreover, this study is one of the rare studies to employ a mixed-method approach that offers diverse but reliable perspectives on information quality as perceived by everyday users of Wikipedia.

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, to explore the importance of specific work environment facets for the overall job satisfaction (JS) of primary full-time permanent teachers (PTs) and substitute/temporary teachers (STs). Second, to highlight the similarity or difference in JS patterns among PTs and STs. Third, to provide guidelines for effective evidence-based human resource management (HRM) interventions targeting to boost PTs and STs JS levels by considering: (1) the perceived importance of individual work facets for them and (2) the school's performance in providing a satisfactory work environment.

Data on overall and important JS facets (i.e. satisfaction with opportunities for self-fulfillment, work intensity/load, salary/income, leadership and collegial relations) were collected from a sample of 438 PTs and STs in Greece. Moreover, MUSA, a method that combines Multi-Criteria Decision (MCDA) and Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA), was applied to uncover the critical work environment facets of PTs and STs overall JS that call for interventions.

The findings suggest that PTs seem to value, more than STs, the transactional and economic aspects of the school environment. More precisely, on the part of PTs, self-fulfillment and salary/income are the main contributors to their JS, whilst leadership is the least important facet of JS. For STs self-fulfillment and collegial relationships are the aspects of work that contribute the most to their overall JS, whilst salary/income is the least important contributor. The study results further indicate that self-fulfillment is the strong attribute of Greek schools' work environment in boosting TJS regardless teachers' status, whilst salary/income and workload are potential threats.

It is one of the few studies that provide insights into the differing JS patterns of STs and PTs through the application of a MCDA/IPA method. Therefore, it offers evidence-based guidelines that take into consideration both the school's performance (overall and facet JS) and importance of core aspects of the work experience for STs and PTs.

This study explored the influence of Dervin’s sensemaking methodology (SMM).

Citation context analysis was used to identify the most influential SMM concepts in 948 articles citing 34 SMM-related studies by Dervin that were published between 1983 and 2017. Moreover, the bibliometric method and content analysis were incorporated to examine the disciplines and research topics influenced by the SMM-related studies and the role of cited content in SMM-related studies.

The influence of SMM is concentrated in information behavior research in the field of library and information science (LIS). The 1992 book chapter From the mind’s eye of the user was most frequently cited, followed by the first SMM study from 1983; 14 of the 18 content categories were relevant to SMM. “Sensemaking,” at the core of SMM, was the most influential cited concept, primarily cited from the 1983 SMM-related study. Although the SMM was developed as a research method, it has not been primarily applied to design research methods in other studies.

This study explored the interdisciplinary influence of Dervin’s SMM from several aspects and demonstrated the complex information dynamics between SMM-related works and citing articles.

The study aims to provide insights in the sensemaking process and the use of business analytics (BA) for project selection and prioritisation in start-up settings. A major focus is on the various ways start-ups can understand their data through the analytical process of sensemaking.

This is a comparative case study of two start-ups that use BA in their projects. The authors follow an interpretive approach and draw from the constructivist grounded theory method (GTM) for the purpose of data analysis, whereby the theory of sensemaking functions as the sensitising device that supports the interpretation of the data.

The key findings lie within the scope of project selection and prioritisation, where the sensemaking process is implicitly influenced by each start-up's strategy and business model. BA helps start-ups notice changes within their internal and external environment and focus their attention on the more critical questions along the lines of their processes, operations and business model. However, BA alone cannot support decision-making around less structured problems such as project selection and prioritisation, where intuitive judgement and personal opinion are still heavily used.

This study extends the research on BA applied in organisations as tools for business development. Specifically, the authors draw on the literature of BA tools in support of project management from multiple perspectives. The perspectives include but are not limited to project assessment and prioritisation. The authors view the decision-making process and the path from insight to value, as a sensemaking process, where data become part of the sensemaking roadmap and BA helps start-ups navigate the decision-making process.

A university’s brand is a key competitive advantage in higher education (HE). This study examines the university's reputation’s intermediary impact on core services (emotional environment, perceived faculty and course suitability) and brand loyalty in private universities in Iran.

A quantitative method was used to achieve research objectives. The data collected from students enrolled in major private universities in the capital of Iran were analyzed to test the proposed model, both directly and indirectly, using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The findings confirmed all of the hypothesized relationships. Prominently, the core service construct (emotional environment, perceived faculty and course suitability) was found to be significantly affecting the university brand reputation. The study found evidence for the impact of university reputation on students' loyalty. Findings also indicated the presence of several indirect relationships among the considered dimensions.

Current research offers implications for universities that are met with the perpetual challenge of survival in the competitive HE marketplace. Findings from the study not only help build theory on university brand loyalty but also make an essential contribution towards guiding managers in developing effective strategies by building reputation and loyalty by concentrating on the most crucial determinants.

Although research in HE marketing is growing, the effects of university core services on building loyalty have not garnered attention, which is theoretically a vital construct. The paper presents a new framework to realize university brand loyalty with the help of integrated relationships among select dimensions in the setting of an emerging HE market.

Websites, search engines, recommender systems, artificial intelligence and digital libraries have the potential to support serendipity for unexpected interaction with information and ideas which would lead to favored information discoveries. This paper aims to explore the current state of research into serendipity particularly related to information encountering.

This study provides bibliometric review of 166 studies on serendipity extracted from the Web of Science. Two bibliometric analysis tools HisCite and RStudio (Biblioshiny) are used on 30 years of data. Citation counts and bibliographic records of the papers are assessed using HisCite. Moreover, visualization of prominent sources, countries, keywords and the collaborative networks of authors and institutions are assessed using RStudio (Biblioshiny) software. A total of 166 papers on serendipity were found from the period 1989 to 2022, and the most influential authors, articles, journals, institutions and countries among these were determined.

The highest numbers of 11 papers were published in the year 2019. Makri and Erdelez are the most influential authors for contributing studies on serendipity. “Journal of Documentation” is the top-ranking journal. University College London is the prominent affiliation contributing highest number of studies on serendipity. The UK and the USA are the prominent nations contributing highest number of research. Authorship pattern for research on serendipity reveals involvement of single author in majority of the studies. OA Green model is the most preferred model for archiving of research articles by the authors who worked on serendipity. In addition, majority of the research outputs have received a citation ranging from 0 to 50.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper may be the first bibliometric analysis on serendipity research using bibliometric tools in library and information science studies. The paper would definitely open new avenues for other serendipity researchers.