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A theoretical analysis of independent business owners' preferences for informal information sources
Author(s) -
Chan Joel,
Brier Jonathan,
Farhadi Zahra,
Lee Myeong,
Janzen Shawn,
Chi WeiWei,
Fellows Andrew,
Winter Susan
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
proceedings of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.193
H-Index - 14
ISSN - 2373-9231
DOI - 10.1002/pra2.352
Subject(s) - outreach , business information , information needs , space (punctuation) , business , knowledge management , marketing , public relations , computer science , world wide web , economics , political science , economic growth , operating system
Independent business owners often prefer informal information sources to formal ones such as library collections. Part of these preferences is rational because contextual and application‐oriented information is usually available from informal sources, which are theoretically the best matches for this kind of information. This suggests that, in addition to outreach strategies, efforts to integrate informal sources of business‐relevant information can improve public libraries' ability to support independent business owners' information needs. Through interviews with business information providers and users, we explore the multi‐dimensional space of information needs in independent businesses.