PLO: 4 Evaluate systems and technologies relevant to a particular information context.
SAA Core Value(s):
- Cultivate collaborative opportunities not only with creators, users, and colleagues, but with any interested parties who wish to engage with archival records.
- Actively contribute ideas and resources to our field’s body of theoretical and practical scholarship.
This was a critical analysis of the concept of information need as it pertains to a particular set of user needs. Information need lies at the heart of all user inquiry both interpersonal and systemic. Reddy, Krishnamurthy, and Asundi (2018) situate information need within the process of retrieval as a function of information behavior which precedes information seeking and information search. Savolainen (2016) gives deference to Robson and Robinson (2013, pp. 184-185) for their analysis of human information behavior (HIB) which drives inquiry, stating that four factors effect or motivate said behavior. These factors include, the environment in which an information actor operates (context); an information actor’s knowledge, education, training and experience relevant to a subject area; an information actor’s personality and mental processes (psychological factors); and the wants and goals giving impetus to information seeking (information need). The user group whose information needs’ I have chosen to focus on are those who use dance/arts archives which may be housed in libraries, museums or cultural institutions. They are persons of any age, gender, race, ethnicity, etc. that have danced (either professionally or otherwise), work(ed) as dance administrators, those perusing academic dance degrees, researchers and dance scholars, choreographers, theatre technicians, dance archivists, and the general lover of dance and dance history. Each of the articles I found, regarding the user group, is rich with real life context about their needs.
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