The stigmatization of emotions as “non-scientific” (Picard 1997, p. 2) has, in the past, prevented researchers from understanding and evaluating “the constructive role they play in higher forms of human experience” (Cacioppo and Gardner 1999). In recent years, the field of affective computing has begun to explore the affective and social aspects of communication and interaction with technology. In Information and Emotion, Nahl and Bilal have compiled a variety of research studies that demonstrate the essential role of emotions in information behaviour.

Information and Emotion is a 17-chapter compilation organized into four sections: Part 1, “Theoretical Frameworks;” Part II, “Macro-Emotional Information Environment; “Part III, “Micro-Emotional Information Environments;” and Part IV, “Special Information Environments.” The 24 contributors are professors and doctoral researchers in library and information science programs, who are mostly based in North America. However, some chapters report on research with non-North American populations and offer a broader cultural and geographic scope.

The introductory chapter, “The Centrality of the Affective in Information Behaviour” is an appropriate and strong start to the text and to Part I, “Theoretical Frameworks”. Here Nahl introduces her “ecological constructivist” model as a framework for investigating the role of emotion in both micro and macro level environments. The model builds on Norman’s visceral, behavioural, and reflective levels of cognitive and affective processing (2004) in that it articulates the role of “affective information reception” as involving the sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective responses of attending to (visceral), appraising (behavioural) and evaluating meaning and assigning value to (reflective) information. Nahl adds to this that the other important role of emotion in humans, “affective information use,” involves the optimization of one’s goals and intentions based on the purpose of the information interaction, and the optimization of the system’s affordances, or quality of feedback. She then elaborates on the origins of this model in cognitive science, affective computing, and human-computer interaction. Nahl proposes that unifying these perspectives through her model provides a flexible, yet “common conceptual language” (p. 4) for exploring affect as the “intersection of technology, human biology and social structures that define group practices and community values” (p. 3). This theoretical underpinning is very useful for the reader prior to diving into subsequent chapters.

Part one continues with Bilal’s discussion of Erik Erickson’s Social-Emotional, Jean Paiget’s Cognitive, and Lev Vygotsky’s Social Cognitive Theories of Child Development as platforms for understanding children’s information interactions with technology, and for designing systems that are “developmentally appropriate, concrete, meaningful and based on children’s preferences” (p. 47). In Chapter 3, Dervin and Reinhard use Sense-Making methodology to explore emotion in information help-seeking behaviour with over 400 faculty and students from 44 universities and colleges in the state of Ohio. This chapter elucidates the “trickiness” of emotions—distinct versus multidimensional—and the different ways in which they can be defined and subsequently studied. Emotions may be viewed as outcomes of tasks or situations, products of individual differences, communication cues in texts and messages, or states that inform information strategies. This is concurrent with Cacioppo and Gardner’s (1999) observation that “emotion is a short label for a very broad category of experiential, behavioural, sociodevelopmental, and biological phenomena”. Perhaps inadvertently, this chapter conveys the different conceptualizations of emotion and articulates the challenges of studying such a diverse construct. Concluding the section on theoretical frameworks is Parker and Berryman’s research on how information seekers determine “What is Enough” and the role of affect in this decision. This chapter contributes five distinct categories for how “enough” is experienced by graduate students completing a course assignment, all of which are informed by emotional drivers. For example, the category “control and getting done” expressed participants’ desire to “avoid embarrassment”, “cope with uncertainty”, and the desire to “meet requirements” of the task.

Part two of the book, “Macro-Emotional Information Environment,” reports on research in a range of physical settings, including a secondary school, a hospital, and a university campus, as well as virtual environments, specifically a digital library and an online question and answer website. Populations of interest include children, young adults, nurses, and general online web users. Some of these chapters take a longitudinal approach to the study of emotion. For example, Farmer (Chapter 5: Developmental Social-Emotional Behaviour and Information Literacy) traces ninth and eleventh graders emotional maturity and self-efficacy over the course of an assigned research paper in relation to their approach to the research process and the quality of their final paper. Massey, Druin and Weeks (Chapter 7) emphasize that emotion is dynamic in their exploration of children’s responses to books that they were asked to review for other children. Other chapters investigate emotion in a holistic sense by showing people in complex environments in which there is interaction with technology, e.g. McKnight’s look at critical care nurses maintaining patient charts that include personal, analog, and digital information interfaces (Chapter 6) and Given’s examination of undergraduates information seeking behaviours in the context of their courses, personal relationships, part-time employment, and the university culture as a whole (Chapter 8). An interesting point made in both of these studies is that the manifestation of emotion is sometimes masked, as when nurses do not allow themselves to express work frustrations around their patients, and that it is not easily classified as positive or negative; some of Given’s participants used anxiety to help them “rise to a challenge” or viewed ease sceptically as “missing something” important in their information seeking tasks. Gazan, in “Understanding the Rogue User” (Chapter 9) observes an online community, Answer bag, for incidences of users who violate the community’s norms and values through behaviours such as flooding the site with responses, using abusive language, or failing to follow site policies. This chapter delves into deviant emotion and “narcissistic personality disorder,” which seems a bit out of place in the context of the larger volume.

The five chapters that constitute part three “Micro-Emotional Information Environment” pertain to emotion as experience and reflection. Chapter 10, Affective Dimensions of Information Seeking in the Context of Reading (McKechnie, Ross & Rothbauer) discusses the emotional responses of readers in relation to the connections they make with fictional characters and worlds or with other readers, or to the way in which a specific book marks an “emotional touchstone” (p. 192) or is used as a tool for information and coping. Helena Mentis argues that the study of emotion should not be limited to outcome of an interaction with a technology, but should also focus on the “intense emotions [that] can arise throughout a task that are not always as a response to a failure” (e.g. not finding sought-for information). An important finding of this study, which collected participants memories of frustrating experiences with web browsers, email clients, word processors, etc. was that frustration was not associated with usability issues. This supports current emphasis in HCI to go beyond usability and consider issues such as aesthetics, engagement, fun, and task-technology fit. Fisher and Landry (Chapter 12) discuss the role of affect in the everyday lives and roles of stay-at-home mothers, a group they describe as often isolated and frequently placed in new situations that warrant information seeking. Chapter 13, Critical Thinking Disposition and Library Anxiety (Kwon) and Chapter 14, Experiencing Information Literacy Affectively (Julien) are both situated in library contexts. Kwon examines the link between the ability to think critically and library anxiety, concluding that initial anxiety can either hinder or positively redirect students’ problem solving, depending on how the student copes. Both Kwon’s work with undergraduate students and Julien’s study of patrons in public libraries support the need for training by library professionals to encourage self-efficacy in information seekers.

The final part of the text focuses on “Special Information Environments” and include research conducted in a disadvantaged community (Chapter 15, Hayter), with blind people (Chapter 16, Jeong) and with international graduate students integrating into North American doctoral programmes (Chapter 17, Mehra). These chapters challenge us to think about information seeking and use from the perspective of diverse communities. To illustrate, Hayter describes the fear entrenched in the word “information” according to members of an impoverished community where outsiders are seldom accepted or trusted. She emphasizes the need to “start where the people are” and to incorporate local knowledge and emotional support into the provision of information services; this is also beneficial advice for those who design systems for such communities. Jeong’s description of blind people’s frustration with expensive adaptive technologies and digital displays void of familiar affordances such as knobs and buttons also has implications for design. Lastly, Mehra describes the “alien information environment” of new doctoral students as they adapt to their programmes. What is not clear here, however, is if Mehra’s findings are limited to students from other cultures, or all students beginning a new academic program.

Much of the work discussed in Information and Emotion is informed by qualitative paradigms and uses self-report questionnaires and interviews. Those looking specifically for experimental research, such as physiological measures, log files, etc. will need to look elsewhere. However, it is this emphasis on the human’s perspective of emotional experience that is valuable in this collection, and readers will be inspired by the variety of ways in which the authors have elicited and classified emotional responses.

Overall, Information and Emotion is definitively people-centred and focuses peripherally on the technology side of human-computer interactions. An interesting exception to this is Massey, Druin & Weeks’ study that reports that the International Children’s Digital Library option to search the collection “by feeling”. However, system design is frequently stated as a potential future direction for the studies in this text. As a result, product and system designers will see the value in the findings presented here as key for understanding the role of emotion in system requirements and use.