Amanda Spink – författare

New Directions in Human Information Behavior, co-edited by Drs. Amanda Spink and Charles Cole provides an understanding of the new directions, leading edge theories and models in human information behavior. Information behavior is conceptualized as complex human information related processes that are embedded within an individual’s everyday social and life processes.

The book presents chapters by an interdisciplinary range of scholars who show new  directions that often challenge the established views and paradigms of information behavior studies. Beginning with an evolutionary framework, the book examines information behaviors over various epochs of human existence from the Palaeolithic Era and within pre-literate societies, to contemporary behaviors by 21st century humans. Drawing upon social and psychological science theories the book presents a more integrated and holistic approach to the understanding of information behaviors that include multitasking and non-linear longitudinal processes, individuals’ information ground, information practices and information sharing, digital behaviors and human information organizing behaviors. The final chapter of the book integrates these new approaches and presents an overview of the key trends, theories and models for further research.

This book is directly relevant to information scientists, librarians, social and evolutionary psychologists. Undergraduate and graduate students, academics and information professionals interested in human information behavior will find this book of particular benefit.

New Directions in Cognitive Information Retrieval presents an exciting new direction for research into cognitive oriented information retrieval (IR) research, a direction based on an analysis of the user’s problem situation and cognitive behavior when using the IR system. This contrasts with the current dominant IR research paradigm which concentrates on improving IR system matching performance.

The chapters describe the leading edge concepts and models of cognitive IR that explore the nexus between human cognition, information and the social conditions that drive humans to seek information using IR systems. Chapter topics include: Polyrepresentation, cognitive overlap and the boomerang effect, Multitasking while conducting the search, Knowledge Diagram Visualizations of the topic space to facilitate user assimilation of information, Task, relevance, selection state, knowledge need and knowledge behavior, search training built into the search, children’s collaboration for school projects, and other cognitive perspectives on IR concepts and issues.

Information behavior has emerged as an important aspect of human life, however our knowledge and understanding of it is incomplete and underdeveloped scientifically. Research on the topic is largely contemporary in focus and has generally not incorporated results from other disciplines.

In this monograph Spink provides a new understanding of information behavior by incorporating related findings, theories and models from social sciences, psychology and cognition. In her presentation, she argues that information behavior is an important instinctive sociocognitive ability that can only be fully understood with a highly interdisciplinary approach. The leitmotivs of her examination are three important research questions: First, what is the evolutionary, biological and developmental nature of information behavior? Second, what is the role of instinct versus environment in shaping information behavior? And, third, how have information behavior capabilities evolved and developed over time?

Written for researchers in information science as well as social and cognitive sciences, Spink’s controversial text lays the foundation for a new interdisciplinary theoretical perspective on information behavior that will not only provide a more holistic framework for this field but will also impact those sciences, and thus also open up many new research directions.