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Article
Publication date: 17 July 2017

Tim Gorichanaz

The purpose of this paper is to explore the “race report” as a document genre in the serious-leisure pursuit of ultrarunning. Despite the sport’s largely non-documental nature…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the “race report” as a document genre in the serious-leisure pursuit of ultrarunning. Despite the sport’s largely non-documental nature, race reports stand as an anomaly in their importance. This exploration serves as a springboard to investigate the informativeness of story in human life generally.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative survey of the information behavior of ultrarunners was conducted. The 46 participants were runners in a 100-mile footrace in 2016. Responses were first analyzed through phenomenological theme analysis and then were subjected to a deductive audit using a framework of information activities validated for use in serious-leisure pursuits.

Findings

Race reports are bound up in information activities across the information-communication chain. Race reports help athletes choose races, prepare for races, pre-experience races, communicate their race experiences, gather new ideas, extend their training and, finally, find entertainment.

Research limitations/implications

This discussion of genre is synchronic, largely limited to one moment in time, and its findings were limited in depth by the survey method. Further research should investigate race reports historically (diachronically) and infrastructurally.

Originality/value

This work points to symbiosis between genre theory and information behavior theory. It also legitimizes narrative reasoning as a way of knowing, which has been largely unrecognized in information behavior. Some implications of this for information science and technology are discussed.

Details

Aslib Journal of Information Management, vol. 69 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-3806

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 October 2020

Tim Gorichanaz

From the perspective of information ethics, one of the purposes of human life is flourishing. This means people ought to be free to engage in creative and flexible actions that…

Abstract

From the perspective of information ethics, one of the purposes of human life is flourishing. This means people ought to be free to engage in creative and flexible actions that allow the fullest realization of their potential as intelligent, decision-making agents – i.e., those actions that a person experiences as meaningful. Researchers have suggested that many people in the post-industrial West experience a lack of meaning in their lives, and this “crisis of meaning” is implicated in many of society's ills; consequently many people are not flourishing as they might. Flourishing relies on information access, processing, and understanding, as well as a particular meaningful experiential dimension of information activities. To speak of information experience, personally meaningful activities are experienced as self-constructive ones, characterized by focused curiosity and presence, and which have a central practice that is supported by peripheral practices. Examples of personally meaningful information behavior from the serious leisure hobby of ultramarathon running are discussed as illustration. In reaching for a more ethical information society, we should seek to infuse more of our information activities with deeper personal meaning.

Details

Information Experience in Theory and Design
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-368-5

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 1 October 2020

Tim Gorichanaz

Abstract

Details

Information Experience in Theory and Design
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-368-5

Book part
Publication date: 1 October 2020

Tim Gorichanaz

How is understanding built? This chapter operationalizes the discussion from the previous chapters to offer some design strategies for creating information systems that promote…

Abstract

How is understanding built? This chapter operationalizes the discussion from the previous chapters to offer some design strategies for creating information systems that promote the building of understanding. These strategies are, namely, multiple perspectives, slowness, and intentional struggle. Examples of and existing literature on these design strategies are discussed.

Details

Information Experience in Theory and Design
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-368-5

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 1 October 2020

Tim Gorichanaz

Abstract

Details

Information Experience in Theory and Design
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-368-5

Book part
Publication date: 1 October 2020

Tim Gorichanaz

Information studies is concerned with information, but what is information for? That question is usually answered with reference to epistemic aims, the default of which is…

Abstract

Information studies is concerned with information, but what is information for? That question is usually answered with reference to epistemic aims, the default of which is generally assumed to be knowledge. Following recent work in epistemology, this chapter argues that, from the perspective of information experience, understanding is an epistemic aim well suited to the field. Understanding refers to the grasping of inferential and explanatory relationships among a body of information. Two forms of understanding can be distinguished: ontological and ontic. Ontological understanding is the background activity through which perception and mentation happen. Thus, ontological understanding is a matter of an agent's conscious and experiential engagement with their environment – in short, it is one's making sense of their situation. Over this background, ontic understanding is made. Ontic understanding can be defined as a coherent and self-transparent network of knowledge that has been constructed by a conscious agent through ontological understanding. All in all, the concept of understanding provides an account for how bodily experience, recorded information, and other forms of information can contribute epistemically in concert.

Details

Information Experience in Theory and Design
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-368-5

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 May 2017

Andrew M. Cox, Brian Griffin and Jenna Hartel

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the role of the body in information in serious leisure by reviewing existing work in information behaviour that theorises the role of…

3288

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the role of the body in information in serious leisure by reviewing existing work in information behaviour that theorises the role of the body, and by drawing selectively on literature from beyond information studies to extend our understanding.

Design/methodology/approach

After finding a lack of attention to the body in most influential works on information behaviour, the paper identifies a number of important authors who do offer theorisations. It then explores what can be learnt by examining studies of embodied information in the hobbies of running, music and the liberal arts, published outside the discipline.

Findings

Auto-ethnographic studies influenced by phenomenology show that embodied information is central to the hobby of running, both through the diverse sensory information the runner uses and through the dissemination of information by the body as a sign. Studies of music drawing on the theory of embodied cognition, similarly suggest that it is a key part of amateur music information behaviour. Even when considering the liberal arts hobby, the core activity, reading, has been shown to be in significant ways embodied. The examples reveal how it is not only in more obviously embodied leisure activities such as sports, in which the body must be considered.

Research limitations/implications

Embodied information refers to how the authors receive information from the senses and the way the body is a sign that can be read by others. To fully understand this, more empirical and theoretical work is needed to reconcile insights from practice theory, phenomenology, embodied cognition and sensory studies.

Originality/value

The paper demonstrates how and why the body has been neglected in information behaviour research, reviews current work and identifies perspectives from other disciplines that can begin to fill the gap.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 73 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 March 2022

Liangzhi Yu and Yijun Liu

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…

Abstract

Purpose

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.

Design/methodology/approach

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

Findings

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.

Research limitations/implications

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.

Practical implications

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

Originality/value

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.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 78 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 September 2021

Andrew Cox and Crystal Fulton

This article examines the relation between place, space and information behaviour.

Abstract

Purpose

This article examines the relation between place, space and information behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach

Concepts of place and space are explored through a comparison of three leisure pursuits: running, urban exploration and genealogy, based on the authors' research and the published literature.

Findings

A socially constructed meaning of place is central to each leisure activity but how it is experienced physically, emotionally and imaginatively are different. Places have very different meanings within each practice. Mirroring this, information behaviours are also very different: such as the sources used, the type of information created and how it is shared or not shared. Information behaviour contributes to the meanings associated with place in particular social practices.

Research limitations/implications

Meaning attached to place can be understood as actively constructed within social practices. Rather than context for information behaviours in the sense of an outside, containing, even constraining, environment, the meaning of place can be seen as actively constructed within social practices and by the information behaviours that are part of them.

Originality/value

The paper adds a new perspective to the understanding of place and space in the study of information behaviour.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 78 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Braver Leaders in Action
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-178-8

1 – 10 of 21