Serendipity in human information behavior: a systematic review

PurposeSerendipitous information discovery has become a unique and important approach to discovering and obtaining information, which has aroused a growing interest for serendipity in human information behavior. Despite numerous publications, few have systematically provided an overview of current state of serendipity research. Consequently, researchers and practitioners are less able to make effective use of existing achievements, which limits them from making advancements in this domain. Against this backdrop, we performed a systematic literature review to explore the world of serendipity and to recapitulate the current states of different research topics.Design/methodology/approachGuided by a prior designed review protocol, this paper conducted both automatic and manual search for available studies published from January 1990 to December 2020 on seven databases. A total of 207 serendipity studies closely related to human information behavior form the literature pool.FindingsWe provide an overview of distinct aspects of serendipity, that is research topics, potential benefits, related concepts, theoretical models, contextual factors and data collection methods. Based on these findings, this review reveals limitations and gaps in the current serendipity research and proposes an agenda for future research directions.Originality/valueBy analyzing current serendipity research, developing a knowledge framework and providing a research agenda, this review is of significance for researchers who want to find new research questions or re-align current work, for beginners who need to quickly understand serendipity, and for practitioners who seek to cultivate serendipity in information environments.

Information Seeking Behaviors of Children and Youth: Challenges and Implications for Information Literacy Instruction A Review of the Literature

Research indicates that technological advances are changing the ways people are searching for, finding, and using information for personal, professional, and educational purposes (Bernier, 2007; Heath, 2007; Perrault, 2007). Human information behavior encompasses people’s information needs, information seeking behaviors, information contexts, patterns of information access, retrieval, processing,and use (Todd, 2003). An emerging area of human information behavior is the information seeking practices of youth. Research suggests the need for educators to adapt instruction and refine students’ Information Seeking skills and foster advanced information literacy (Branch, 2003; Dixon & Shenton, 2005; Kulthau, 1994, 2003; Hultgren and Limberg, 2002; Laverty, 2003; Leu and Kinzer, 2000; and McGregor, 1994).

Affective Factors in Human Information Behavior: A Conceptual Analysis of Interdisciplinary Research on Information Behavior

Purpose/Thesis: The article contains theoretical and conceptual reflection and analysis of how emotions and other affective phenomena are defined and understood in contemporary research on human information behavior. The article draws attention to the interdisciplinary nature of research into affective information activities. Approach/Methods: The reported research employs a qualitative approach, relying on critical literature review, and conceptual and thematic analysis. The analyzed material came from select publications from 2014–2020. Results and Conclusions: Information science studies the role of emotions in information behavior. However, the application of the affective paradigm remains very limited. The affective understanding of information activities should be constantly expanded on an interdisciplinary basis with reference to theories and methods of other disciplines, such as psychology. Originality/Value: The article studies the development of the theoretical affective phenomenon pa­radigm and presents the most important approaches psychology takes to emotions. By analyzing the latest trends in the study of affective information behaviors, the study joins the collaborative effort to develop an agenda providing a theoretical and practical basis for the development of interdisciplinary research within the affective paradigm.

Information encountering re-encountered

PurposeIn order to understand the totality, diversity and richness of human information behavior, increasing research attention has been paid to examining serendipity in the context of information acquisition. However, several issues have arisen as this research subfield has tried to find its feet; we have used different, inconsistent terminology to define this phenomenon (e.g. information encountering, accidental information discovery, incidental information acquisition), the scope of the phenomenon has not been clearly defined and its nature was not fully understood or fleshed-out.Design/methodology/approachIn this paper, information encountering (IE) was proposed as the preferred term for serendipity in the context of information acquisition.FindingsA reconceptualized definition and scope of IE was presented, a temporal model of IE and a refined model of IE that integrates the IE process with contextual factors and extends previous models of IE to include additional information acquisition activities pre- and postencounter.Originality/valueBy providing a more precise definition, clearer scope and richer theoretical description of the nature of IE, there was hope to make the phenomenon of serendipity in the context of information acquisition more accessible, encouraging future research consistency and thereby promoting deeper, more unified theoretical development.

Computer model of information behavior to study information security professionals

In this paper, we propose a computer model of information behavior to study information security professionals and an architecture, which mimics the way our brain learns new concepts to simulate this behavior computationally. Used to represent and describe any domain of knowledge, we may use ontologies to study the human information behavior and show some of the concepts and relation-ships involved in this field of knowledge. A deep knowledge of the core concepts underpinning this field can provide us with a solid basis for constructing a model. We can also use computer-programming tools not only to capture the ideas that make up this field of knowledge, but can also simulate the human information behavior. The use of computers also allows us to crawl data over the Internet and process large amounts of them in order to find patterns with some specific characteristics. In the paper, we also present the current state of this research and challenges of the model.

Understanding encountering of story leads: A case of newspaper reporting behavior at Midwestern metropolitan-area newspapers

An interdisciplinary approach explores how journalists embrace the unexpected as part of their reporting routines using Erdelez’s framework of information encountering from the study of human information behavior and the concepts of news routines and story ideation from journalism studies. This paper provides a fresh perspective on the sociology of news in finding that the participating journalists embraced the unexpected by routinizing encountering of story leads and opening themselves to the opportunities they provide.

information behavior of Information Security and Cryptography professionals

This paper presents a user study of information security and cryptography professionals, focusing on the use of information behavior models. The methodological procedure proposed in this paper uses as a base model the information behavior model proposed by Choo et al. (2000), which divides human information behavior into three processes: information need, seek and use. The exploratory, descriptive and quali-quantitative study was carried out with 50 professionals from the Brazilian Community of Information Security and Cryptography (Comsic) through questionnaires, interviews and documentary analysis. Four subgroups were identified: cryptographic algorithms and protocols research group, cryptographic hardware and firmware development group, network security professionals group, and information security managers group.