2.1 A Longitudinal Analysis of the Information Needs and Uses Literature

2.1 A Longitudinal Analysis of the Information Needs and Uses Literature

Heidi Julien & Lawrence J. Duggan

This article discusses a study done by Heidi Julien and Lawrence J. Duggan concerning the information needs and uses literature published between 1984-1989 and 1995-1998. Their study, based on a review done in 1990 by Hewins, analyzed the degree of interdisciplinarity within the literature. They used citation reviews as well as analyzing the content of the literature itself to determine if any improvement was made across the time periods evaluated. At the end of the article (and the end of the study) Julien and Duggan determined that some progress has been made, but they indicate that the progress does not seem sufficient. They also admit that their study has not analyzed the progress as deeply as it could, and suggest that further analysis can be done through literature with its basic ideas outside of the realm of information science.

I agree with the reasoning behind the study itself. Hewins’ review had no scientific backing and was based on scholarly opinion. It makes sense to feel the need to evaluate if the claims made by the review could be backed with data. It does seem, however, that no matter how much evaluation of literature is done, that the study will always be complete. The bank of literature reviewed may be incomplete. It would be hard to locate all of the published literature dealing with information needs and uses even from a concrete time period. Still, I think that the study was as conclusive as possible, given the circumstances.

Improving the interdisciplinary nature of information science literature is important because many different aspects of the user can affect their information need. Hewins discussed the need for more integration research wise within the fields of psychology and computer science, to relate to the cognitive processes of information needs and use. Julian and Duggan discovered that computing and science were second and third in percentage of citations outside of LIS in the 1984-1989 time period, but shifted to third and 5^th during the 1995-1998 time period. It seems interesting that computing would have fewer citations, as much of computer use is related to information use. I would have guessed that with the increase of home computer use, and computing becoming a more common activity, the research and literature would have increased. During the two time periods analyzed, the distribution of the citations did change to even out slightly, so that would seem to note some improvement. I would be interested to see what an analysis of the literature from the past four years would yield, especially whether or not there was an increase in references in the computing field, based on the technological advances in the past 10 years.