Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs, and behavior (

This excellent book is about information behavior, sometimes referred to as human information behavior (HIB), which investigates why and how humans need, seek, and use information for work, school, and everyday life. There are many related research fields covering this same bit of real estate. Information retrieval (IR) and human-computer interaction (HCI) cover the system side of the searcherinformation system interaction. Human information interaction (HII) covers the same territory as HIB, but also studies the searcher–system interaction during the search event itself (Fidel, 2012), while Looking for Information limits its investigation to human behavior before and after the search event. It is interested in the broad, often chaotic sociological and psychological context that determines informationseeking behavior, particularly why people have difficulty finding information, the barriers to successful information seeking, particularly for disadvantaged groups in society, and why people avoid information all together. Every sentence of Looking for Information oozes quality, care, and thoroughness, making it very much the essential textbook-handbook for library and information studies students, information science students, and computer science students interested in an overview of the essential, core topics that constitute the field of information behavior. Looking for Information has become the go-to book for these core topics. In addition to its popular success, Donald Case won the prestigious American Society for Information Science and Technology’s Best Information Science Book for the original version of Looking for Information published in 2002. This fourth edition of Looking for Information is coming out a mere 4 years after the previous edition. There have been many changes in these 4 years; the field is evolving rapidly. Donald Case has brought in Lisa Given as coauthor, who in addition to being an esteemed information science professor first in Canada and now at Australia’s Charles Sturt University, is a member of the Research Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education. Her addition, therefore, reinforces Case’s original 2002 theme: a call for information science research to influence practice. Together the two authors have updated the book’s references, deleting 100 old ones and adding 200 new ones. They have updated recommended readings at the end of each chapter. They have added paragraphs on new concepts with new examples. And the authors have expanded the methods chapter (Chapter 9), particularly the text devoted to qualitative research methods. For information behavior research to influence practice, Case’s original 2002 goal was to change the direction of the field, shifting it away from quantitative research utilizing survey questionnaires whose frequent purpose was the allocation of library resources among competing sources or channels of information use. With the change in name from information seeking to information behavior, Case wanted to investigate the deeper contextual issues of the nexus between the information seeker and the world of information. This includes the study of information concepts surrounding the unconscious motivations of the searcher, including the reasons for information avoidance. Why would anyone avoid seeking information, which in our Information Age we all think is unquestionably beneficial? Because there are barriers to information seeking, both psychological and sociological. Case and Given tackle head on this dark side of information behavior, the seeker’s power or lack of it over her own life, for example, and the searcher’s perception of her existential place in the world. Does the seeker believe she can effectuate change in their own life or in the world around her? With the internet, the problem of information availability is largely taken care of; so these underlying human motivations and behaviors are key, important. But very difficult to study. The book’s 11 chapters are divided into five parts. Each chapter begins with a detailed table of contents for the chapter; and each chapter ends with a summary of the chapter as well as recommended further readings, which are annotated. The book also contains sophisticated Author and Subject Indexes. For students starting out on a topic, an Appendix containing a Glossary of concept terms, specifies where in the book the term is discussed as well as the two or three most important outside sources illustrating use of the concept “term.” A second Appendix gives Sample Questions for each book chapter, which facilitates teaching and discussion of the concepts. VC 2016 ASIS&T