Information Experience: Approaches to Theory and Practice

“Information” as a concept has increasingly become the focus of research and scholarly discussions. These discussions vary from how people engage with information in both a personal and a group context to people’s information worlds, which are subjective and individualistic. Much of this research focuses on information needs, particularly how contextual elements and people’s mental structures give rise to information needs and in turn prompt information activities. A few of the information activities that have received attention over the years include information seeking, use, sharing and communication. Whilst grappling with these concepts, researchers are now exploring people’s “information life-worlds” in more depth.

The focus of this exciting new book, Information Experience, is to open a conversation on the idea of information experience. The editors conceptualise information experience as the way in which people experience or derive meaning from the way in which they engage with information. Both editors and contributors understand this concept as being a complex, multidimensional engagement with information. The book explores researchers’ thinking around information experience and represents a collective awareness of information experience. It also seeks to draw attention to an awareness of information experience and explore the potential thereof for scholarly discourse and research in the information field. As a result, the book provides a number of theoretical lenses through which people’s information experiences can be examined.

The book is subdivided into seven sections. Aside from the overview and afterword, these sections focus on the following topics:

• theorising information experience;

• experiencing information;

• community information experience;

• organisational and professional information experience; and

• learners’ information experience.

Throughout these sections the chapter authors consider the nature and idea of an information experience, the nature of people’s information experiences and the significance thereof. The discussions reveal that information experience is complex, multidimensional and grounded in real life. It highlights how individual contexts change the nature of one’s engagement with information. Furthermore, information is integrated in thoughts, feelings, senses and actions. Information is also integrated in people’s social and cultural lives and is influenced by these.

Future research directions conclude the book. The editors believe that the idea of information experience is likely to influence future research and practice across a range of domains. They therefore provide a few questions that are indicative of the work that can be done in this area of research. They also consider avenues for fostering discussion and positioning information experience as a research domain. Furthermore, the editors realise the need to consider the relationship between information experience and other experienced-focused research domains outside information research.

Information Experience truly opens new research avenues for researchers interested in information behaviour research. The book provides the opportunity for researchers and professional practitioners to strengthen research ties in support of future information experience research. It could also be used as a textbook for the teaching of information experience at a postgraduate level. A very useful index concludes the volume.