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This paper aims to discuss what it means to consider the information experience of academic information management from a constructivist grounded theory perspective. Using a doctoral study in progress as a case illustration, the authors demonstrate how information experience research applies a wide lens to achieve a holistic view of information management phenomena. By unifying a range of elements, and understanding information and its management to be inseparable from the totality of human experience, an information experience perspective offers a fresh approach to answering today's research questions.

The case illustration is a constructivist grounded theory study using interactive interviews, an original form of semi-structured qualitative interviews combined with card-sorting exercises (Conrad and Tucker, 2019), to deepen reflections by participants and externalize their information experiences. The constructivist variant of grounded theory offers an inductive, exploratory approach to address the highly contextualized information experiences of student-researchers in managing academic information.

Preliminary results are reported in the form of three interpretative categories that outline the key aspects of the information experience for student-researchers. By presenting these initial results, the study demonstrates how the constructivist grounded theory methodology can illuminate multiple truths and bring a focus on interpretive practices to the understanding of information management experiences.

This new approach offers holistic insights into academic information management phenomena as contextual, fluid and informed by meaning-making and adaptive practices. Limitations include the small sample size customary to qualitative research, within one situated perspective on the academic information management experience.

The study demonstrates the theoretical and methodological contributions of the constructivist information experience research to illuminate information management in an academic setting.

Qualitative researchers and information practitioners often investigate questions that probe the underlying mental models, nuanced perspectives, emotions and experiences of their target populations. The in-depth qualitative interview is a dominant method for such investigations and the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how incorporating hybrid card-sorting activities into interviews can enable deeper participant reflections and generate rich data sets to increase understanding.

Following a review of relevant literature, the case illustration presented is a grounded theory study into the student-researcher information experience with personal academic information management. This study uses hybrid card sorting within in-depth, semi-structured interviews, a unique adaptation that extends multi-disciplinary awareness of the benefits of card-sort exercises for qualitative research.

Emerging from diverse fields, ranging from computer science, engineering, psychology and human–computer interaction, card sorting seeks to illuminate how participants understand and organise concepts. The case illustration draws largely on methods used in interaction design and information architecture. Using either open or fixed designs, or hybrid variations, card-sort activities can make abstract concepts more tangible for participants, offering investigators a new approach to interview questions with the aid of this interactive, object-based technique.

Opening with a comprehensive review of card-sort studies, the authors present an information experience case illustration that demonstrates the rich data generated by hybrid card sorting within qualitative interviews, or interactive interviews. This is followed by discussion of the types of research questions that may benefit from this original method.

This chapter explores the potential of grounded theory research methods for eliciting threshold concepts. It begins with an overview of threshold concept theory, then reviews current methodological approaches, as well as challenges encountered, when researching threshold concepts. The discussion argues for the suitability of grounded theory for this purpose, using a specific case for illustration. Specific elements of the research design that strengthened the use of grounded theory in the exploration of threshold concepts are described. The case example used is of graduate students and practicing professionals’ learning experiences when acquiring expertise in the online environment. The case is used to demonstrate the grounded theory method’s efficacy for eliciting evidence of transformative learning experiences, leading to implications for improving curriculum design.

This paper reports on a taxonomy design project involving graduate students in information science (MLIS degree) working as intern-consultants under the guidance of an information science faculty member. The consulting team developed a taxonomy that would reflect current academic departmental structures and be used to optimise publisher tools for generating metrics and interpretive assessment.

In this case study, three students worked under the direction of a faculty member on a consulting team for a Silicon Valley company that provides business analytics to academic publishers. Tasked with designing a taxonomy of disciplinary knowledge to support the company’s analytical software tools, the students developed methods for environmental scans, vocabulary design, validation and taxonomy management for the project objectives.

The consulting experience proved to be highly beneficial for the students as an opportunity to take concepts learned in their coursework and apply them in practice. The project team delivered to the company the most detailed taxonomy of academic disciplines in the marketplace, along with recommendations for its maintenance and management for ongoing support of business objectives. The company was supportive throughout the internship programme, generating collaborative contributions from all stakeholders.

As more students earning an Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) or similar degree move into a wide array of careers within business environments, internship experience through consulting can be an essential advantage to their preparation.

Purpose – This chapter puts forth an approach for deeper understanding of the ways that information professionals learn, based on concepts and strategies that enable them to fulfill the varied roles they take on. It considers multiple facets in their experiences of using information to learn, the essence of informed learning (Bruce, 2008). The purpose of furthering this understanding is to develop approaches for designing enhanced curriculum to support transformative learning experiences.

Design & Methodology – To explore the learning experiences, roles, and strategies of information professionals, this chapter enlists two frameworks pertinent to transformative learning: first, the informed learning construct of Bruce (2008) and, second, the threshold concepts theoretical framework of Meyer and Land (2003). Both frameworks have been used to guide the design of curriculum, and this chapter discusses using them together to design higher education courses for information professionals. Learning activities from two courses in an online MLIS degree program – information retrieval system design and information architecture – are used as case illustrations for implementing a blended approach.

Findings & Discussion – The outcomes from implementing curriculum that has been designed based on informed learning principles and threshold concepts that were derived from learner experiences are discussed. A third construct, information experience (Bruce et al., 2014), which evolved in part out of informed learning, is brought into the discussion, providing an additional dimension for understanding the learner’s relationship with his/her information world.

Expert searchers engage with information in a variety of professional settings, as information brokers, reference librarians, information architects and faculty who teach advanced searching. As my recent research shows, the expert searcher’s information experience is defined by profound discernment of critical concepts about information, and a fluid ability to apply this knowledge to their engagement with the information environment. The information experience of the expert searcher means active and intentional participation with the processes and players that created that information environment. Expert searchers become an integral and seamless part of their information environment and also play a role in facilitating the information experiences of others.

In this chapter, after discussing my understanding of the concept of information experience, I outline how I used threshold concept theory to explore the information experience of expert searchers. Through the findings, I identify four threshold concepts in the acquisition of search expertise that provide new perspectives on the information experience of the expert searcher. These new perspectives have implications for search engine design and how advanced search skills are taught. Finally, I consider how the fresh insights about the expert searcher’s experiences contribute to wider understanding about information experience.

The purpose of this book is to open a conversation on the idea of information experience, which we understand to be a complex, multidimensional engagement with information. In developing the book we invited colleagues to propose a chapter on any aspect of information experience, for example conceptual, methodological or empirical. We invited them to express their interpretation of information experience, to contribute to the development of this concept. The book has thus become a vehicle for interested researchers and practitioners to explore their thinking around information experience, including relationships between information experience, learning experience, user experience and similar constructs. It represents a collective awareness of information experience in contemporary research and practice. Through this sharing of multiple perspectives, our insights into possible ways of interpreting information experience, and its relationship to other concepts in information research and practice, is enhanced. In this chapter, we introduce the idea of information experience. We also outline the book and its chapters, and bring together some emerging alternative views and approaches to this important idea.