Finding without seeking: the information encounter in the context of reading for pleasure

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Abstract

This paper examines nongoal oriented transactions with texts in order to investigate the information encounter in the context of daily living. Findings are reported from a larger research project based on intensive interviews with 194 committed readers who read for pleasure. The paper analyses interview responses that illuminate two aspects of the readers' experience of reading for pleasure: (1) how readers choose books to read for pleasure; and (2) books that have made a significant difference in readers' lives. The paper concludes with five themes emerging from this analysis that have implications for the information search process: the active engagement of the reader/searcher in constructing meaning from texts; the role of the affective dimension; ‘trustworthiness’; the social context of information seeking; and the meta-knowledge used by experienced readers in making judgments about texts.

Introduction

The research on information seeking (IS) has typically constructed the searcher as a person in a state of uncertainty who queries an information system hoping to get answers that help with a specific goal/task/or problem (Vakkari, 1998). The searcher may be a member of the general public who wants to know the typical climate in Melbourne, Australia, in March in order to pack for an trip; a student who must gather material for an assigned school project on the biographical elements in Jane Eyre; or a research–scientist who wants a literature review on the role of C\EBP transcription factors in adiposyte differentiation in order to complete a grant application. The question may be generated within the context of the information-searcher's own daily life or work-world or it may be delegated or assigned by others, as is usually the case with students. The job of searching may be done by the end-user or be mediated by an information professional. The success of the search may be evaluated in terms of its ‘helpfulness’ as determined by the person who originated the query or in terms of its ‘correctness’ or ‘relevance’ as determined by a panel of expert judges (Dewdney & Ross, 1994). Despite variations in the complexity of the answer being sought, the identity and search practices of the person who does the actual searching, the nature of the information system consulted, or the methods of evaluating search success, one thing is assumed: the first step in the information-seeking process is an articulated question. The information-seeker becomes conscious of an “anomalous state of knowledge” (Belkin, 1980) or a “gap in sense-making” (Dervin, 1980, Dervin, 1989) or an uncertainty (Krikelas, 1983) and then takes steps to fill in the gap or reduce the uncertainty. In cases where the information need is fuzzy or the searcher is unaware of helpful sources, the term ‘browsing’ rather than searching may be used, but even here browsing is usually discussed as a goal-oriented, semi-structured search tactic to be used after some initial formulation of a query (Bates, 1979, Bates, 1989, Marchionini, 1995, Twidale et al., 1997; in contrast, for a view of browsing as scanning without a specific goal, see Toms, 1998).

In short, in order to qualify as information-seekers in most IS research, individuals must experience a ‘problem situation’ and then formally initiate the search process by querying one of our systems: a reference service, an online catalogue, a database, a collection of books. The emphasis on goal-directed, problem-solving information is reinforced when the researcher frames the data collection by asking interviewees or respondents to think first of a specific incident in which they had a problem and took steps to resolve it or had an uncertainty and tried to clarify it. An exception to this problem-solving approach is research on what may be called community or citizen information or information related to ‘everyday life’, where the research subjects are often members of disadvantaged or marginalized groups. The research typically tries to explain or understand why nonusers of services are indeed nonusers, i.e. why they don't ask questions even though it is assumed they have problem situations. In such research, the focus is often on the barriers — whether economic, cultural, class-based, or age-based and whether cognitive or affective — that makes it hard for members of outsider groups (Chatman, 1996) to seek information purposively from system-sources such as libraries, community information centers, or official helping agencies.

Two studies undertaken initially as Ph.D. dissertations represent to date the most substantial contributions to the literature about information that is accidentally encountered. Australian researcher Kirsty Williamson, whose thesis was a complex investigation of the information world of 202 older adults, concentrated in her article ‘Discovered by chance’ (Williamson, 1998) on what she calls “incidental information acquisition” as distinguished from “purposeful information seeking”. Williamson's subjects, aged 60 and up, found that helpful “everyday life information” often “cropped up” when they were browsing through the newspaper or talking on the telephone with family or friends; it cropped up somewhat less often when they were watching television. In reporting how these seniors “monitored their world”, Williamson noted that “there were many examples of respondents acquiring information unexpectedly — where they were totally unaware of an information ‘gap’” (p. 31). Similarly Sandra Erdelez's thesis, reported in her article ‘Information encountering’ (Erdelez, 1997), was an exploratory study of the accidental discovery of useful information by students and staff in an academic setting. She surveyed 132 respondents and conducted further in-depth interviews with 12 of them selected as frequent information-encounterers. Erdelez reported that “super-encounterers” “believed in creating situations conducive to information” and that successful information-encountering experiences provided necessary “positive reinforcement” for continuing to create opportunities for serendipitous encounters (p. 417).

It is hardly surprising that, with these few interesting exceptions, the research field typically constructs the information-seeker as a person with an articulated question that is formally posed of an information system. After all, an important research goal is the design of better systems and services. We should, however, also acknowledge that this construction captures only part of the domain of information seeking and not necessarily all that is relevant to the design of better systems. We know, in fact, that in the course of everyday living people constantly seek, or at least encounter, and use textual information without ever posing a formal question to an information system. A fruitful research area may lie in interrogating these everyday practices. In the interest of investigating information-related activities that lie outside the standard scope of IS research, this paper reports findings from a larger research project based on intensive interviews with 194 committed readers who read for pleasure. In these interviews, readers were not asked about their information needs or how they went about searching for and using information; they were asked about their reading, how they went about choosing books to read for pleasure, and what value this reading has in their lives. The view of reading taken here, derived from reader-response theory (Fish, 1980, Goodman, 1997, Iser, 1978, Suleiman & Crosman, 1980, Tompkins, 1980), is that reading is a transaction between a text and a reader who uses both personal experience of the world and familiarity with literary codes and conventions to construct meaning from the black marks on the page.

From their accounts, a rich picture emerged that enlarges our understanding of the information encounter in the context of daily living. It turns out that when looking for books to read for pleasure, avid readers constantly scan their environments for hints and suggestions, using their previous experience with books and reading to help them interpret cues. In the course of their often very extensive reading, they normally do not think of themselves as involved in information seeking as such. Nevertheless when reading extended narrative forms, particularly biography, history, and fiction, readers bring to the texts their own individual concerns and interests, which act as a filter to highlight those aspects of the text that speak to their concerns. Readers play a crucial role in enlarging the meaning of the text by reading it within the context of their own lives. Through their act of making sense of texts and applying them to their lives, readers creatively rewrite texts (Fish, 1980). Readers choose books for the pleasure anticipated in the reading itself but then, apparently serendipitously, they encounter material that helps them in the context of their lives. In effect, these avid readers reported finding without seeking.

Section snippets

About the study

Evidence about the role of reading for pleasure as a source of valued information comes from a transcribed set of 194 intensive, open-ended interviews with adult readers, undertaken as part of a larger study on reading for pleasure. The interviewed subjects were not randomly chosen but were deliberately selected as individuals who read a lot and read by choice. The study focused on committed readers who said that reading for pleasure is a very important part of their lives. This criterion means

Reading: an activity integrated into the texture of life

In the interviews, readers were asked, “What would it be like if for one reason or another you couldn't read”. Given the selection criteria for participation in the study, interviewees were expected to claim that not being able to read would be experienced as a loss, but the typical response was unexpectedly intense. The majority of committed readers in the study said that being unable to read was unthinkable: “It's a passion. I can't deny it”; “It's a physical need with me to have to read”;

Choosing books to read for pleasure

For avid readers, the process of finding a book to read for pleasure encompasses much more than is usually evoked by a notion of browsing bookstock or searching a catalogue. In this regard, Savolainen's study (1995) concerning the role of “way of life” in information seeking provides a useful framework for thinking about readers' choices as a component of everyday practices. Previous studies of choosing books to read for pleasure, usually based on surveys with pre-established categories of

Strategies for selection

The bedrock for choice is the reader's mood: what do I feel like reading now? what will I want to read in the future (that I should borrow or buy now to have on hand)? Readers overwhelmingly reported that they choose books according to their mood and what else is going on in their lives. Short books, easy reads, and old favorites are picked when the reader is busy or under stress. At such times, rereading a childhood favorite is the quintessence of comfort reading. More demanding and unfamiliar

What readers say about how books make a difference in their lives

The question that was posed to readers, “Has there ever been a book that has helped you or made a big difference to your life in one way or another?” is a variant of a question on how an information source helps that Brenda Dervin uses in her sense-making approach (Dervin & Nilan, 1986, p. 22). The readers in the study were also familiar with the notion of “the book that changed my life” (see Sabine & Sabine, 1983) and some were unwilling to let that concept go unchallenged. When asked about a

Discussion

What, if anything, does this picture of avid readers and how they choose and value books contribute to an understanding of the information search process? For one thing, these committed engagements with books, undertaken for their own sake and not for an extrinsic goal, merit attention for the way they exemplify everyday practices of meaning-making. Moreover the knowledge needed to design better systems and services is likely to include an understanding of these everyday practices. As is so

Acknowledgements

This research has benefited from the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

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