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The Paradoxical World of Young People’s Information Behavior

Andrew K. Shenton
Division of Information and Communication Studies, School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences, Northumbria University, UK

Also available as a PDF file.

Although thousands of papers relating to information behavior have been published in recent years, little attention has been given to the paradoxes that emerge in terms of either the features of such behavior or the investigation of it through research. This paper draws on a wide range of studies, many conducted by the author, to explore ten particular paradoxes that are apparent with regard to the information behavior of children and young people. Several indicate discrepancies between theory and practice, whilst others show that, when some priorities are addressed, other areas of concern may suffer.

Introduction

Information behavior (IB) is complex. It takes place in a multiplicity of environments, as individuals employ different strategies with a diversity of materials, resources and organizations to meet a range of needs associated with the various roles, issues, demands and personal interests arising in their lives. The totality of research that has been undertaken and theories that have been derived in attempts to understand the intricacies of IB has drawn on such disparate disciplines as anthropology, communication, health, management, politics, psychology and sociology (Shenton, in press a). The number of papers, as well as the variety of material to which they refer, is considerable. An estimate by Case (2006) indicates that, in the period between January 2001 and December 2004 alone, over two thousand sources of potential relevance to IB came into existence, and hundreds of new items relating to it are appearing each year. Despite the complexity of the area and the volume of research pertaining to IB, little attempt has been made to explore the paradoxes that are apparent with regard to both IB itself and the study of it. This paper seeks to highlight these anomalies in terms of young people’s IB and incorporates insights from a range of research projects conducted in the last thirty-five years. It gives particular weight to the author’s own investigations. Although somewhat different in focus in that the paradoxes presented here tend to counterpoint two key features of the modern “information world,” the article was inspired by the work of Dervin (1976) which identifies a series of questionable assumptions that have hindered research into IB.

The Paradoxes

Connecting users with information
The first two paradoxes are concerned with information access. Few would dispute the pertinence of one of Urquhart’s foremost principles of librarianship, namely that libraries are for users (Urquhart, 1981), and indeed these organizations put in place many systems and procedures to ensure that, as far as possible, information materials are readily available to users seeking to satisfy their needs and wants. The classification system, for example, arranges artifacts in logical categories, whilst the catalogue provides entry points by which end-users, after forming statements of their needs, can trace items within the collection that are relevant to their purposes. The spatial arrangement is designed to sequence the stock in such a way as to enable searchers to find on the shelves the material they require. Fines are imposed in order to increase the likelihood that volumes which are legitimately borrowed are returned on time and can then be made available to others.

Yet, much empirical research with young people reveals that, far from facilitating information access, these measures often form barriers and act as deterrents to use. In terms of classification, a research project carried out in north-east England found that several teenage participants considered the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme employed in their school library to be unhelpful and confusing (Shenton, 2007b). One youngster wrote of her preference for “different categories”; another did not find the groupings systematic and a third called for “better organisation of books” (p. 40). The mismatch between the keywords employed in library catalogues and the language that young people themselves use to represent their information needs has long been a matter of concern. Poston-Anderson and Edwards (1993) offer some valuable insights into the discrepancy. Working with adolescent girls, they realized that the search terms they generated were not topic-based and were characterized by “a degree of urgency or intensity that did not appear to be evident in the institutional terms” (p. 29). Difficulties encountered by youngsters in finding desired items on the library shelves have also frequently been reported. Moore and St. George’s (1991) ten- to twelve-year-olds struggled to translate Dewey numbers into actual spatial locations and, more recently, Laverty (2002), in her research, discovered that the location of books “on the shelves was hindered by students’ lack of understanding of shelving conventions” (p. 227). The deterring effect of fines on young people’s use of libraries is noted by Meyers (1999). In five of the ten cities in which the survey that she reports took place, teenagers cited fines as a barrier. Meyers writes, “Some stated that it is easier to buy a book than to worry about due dates and accumulated fines” (p. 44). As Flint (1979) points out, “Systems and catalogues should be servants, not oppressors” (p. 72) and, ironically, all the practices mentioned are indeed intended to assist users, at least as an overall body. Paradox one may be summarized as follows: the effects of a library’s procedures with regard to user attitudes and behavior are frequently inconsistent with the organization’s aims.

The second paradox forms one of the great conundrums within modern information retrieval, namely that in order for users to access the material that they are pursuing, information systems often demand that they demonstrate knowledge on the very matter of which they are ignorant. Shenton (2007e) describes two specific incidents that bear testimony to the problems that young children may encounter in this regard. For a homework assignment, one eight-year-old participant was required to learn about static electricity but this phrase was not used by the teacher who introduced the task. She merely demonstrated how a sheet of transparent plastic could be made to stick to another surface and asked her pupils to investigate why this was happening. Whilst the boy usually relished the opportunity to find out information in his children’s encyclopedia, he knew that this strategy was inappropriate in these circumstances. A seven-year-old boy faced a similar problem when he wanted to know more about what he could see on examining a range of everyday materials and substances under a children’s microscope. Again, the accepted names and terms for what he was observing were unknown to him. Both children admitted that their knowledge of the subject was so limited that they “didn’t know what to look it up under” (Shenton, 2007e, p. 335). In the face of such problems, it is no surprise that Hirsh (1997) believes that domain knowledge is a key factor in the effective retrieval of information from an electronic system.

Difficulties comparable to those recounted by the two boys may, of course, be encountered by information-seekers of all ages, and many readers will no doubt have experienced the problem that, when using the “help” facility offered by a computer software package, it may be far from easy to find out about the feature one wishes to use unless one is aware of the name by which it is known. Nevertheless, the limitations in the vocabularies of young children render them especially likely to encounter this barrier. The danger is great when a young child confronts the task of using a dictionary to learn the spelling of a word. Here he or she must be able to make a reasonably accurate attempt at spelling the word in order to look it up. One of the great strengths of the Aurally Coded English (ACE) Dictionary, which is especially appropriate for young children, is that, since the entry points are those of the sounds of a word, rather than its actual spelling, such circularity is avoided. Moseley, who pioneered this type of dictionary, explains a key problem that faces the user of its ordinary equivalent; “The vowel sounds are the biggest source of difficulty; there are more than two hundred vowel spellings associated with the eighteen basic sounds. That leads to uncertainty and delay when looking up words in a standard dictionary” (ACE Dictionary, 1995, p. i). Paradox two may be summarized as follows: in order to access information within a source, the user must often apply knowledge that he or she does not yet possess.

User attitudes and strategies
The third paradox deals with the contrast between the actions and the opinions of young people. Evidence of the popularity of electronic information sources, and the World Wide Web, in particular, is abundant in LIS literature and has been since the late 1990s. Work by Criddle (1998), Barry-Rodriguez (1999), Herring (1999) and Meyers (1999), for example, attests to the widespread use of electronic materials at this time. More recently, empirical research reported by Herring and Tarter (2006/07), Madden, Ford and Miller (2007) and Shenton (2007d) reveal its continuing popularity. Shenton discovered that the Internet formed easily the most popular information resource among his teenage respondents when they were aiming to address either school-inspired needs or leisure-related wants. Nevertheless, whilst Pickard (2004) found that motivation to use the Internet among her participants was often high initially, they were easily discouraged when it did not meet their expectations and the male research subjects, especially, were highly critical of the resource. Many of the young informants in Shenton and Dixon’s (2003b) study were heavy users of the Web but they, too, were often disillusioned with it. They highlighted an inability to find on occasion the desired information, felt swamped by the overwhelming volume of poor quality material, and admitted the temptation to succumb to distractions on the Web that could deflect them from purposeful information-seeking. Loertscher (2003) believes that much of the appeal of the Internet lies in its convenience and ready availability. In this respect, comparisons can be drawn between young people’s exploitation of the Web and their consultation of other people for information purposes. Shenton and Dixon (2003c) have found that the latter course of action is also very frequently taken by young people, even though a range of problems can arise and, in several instances, the inquirers in their study were aware that information of dubious quality had been provided. The authors conclude that, for some information-seekers, “the temptation to pursue a convenient method appeared to outweigh the desire to make the effort demanded to consult a more authoritative source” (p. 230). Paradox three may be summarized as follows: young people are often highly critical of particular information resources yet continue to use them habitually.

The fourth paradox is one that has been identified by Graef (2000). He notes that, in an age in which the world of information is expanding and increasing in complexity, users’ conceptual tools for dealing with it are becoming simplified. Graef’s argument may best be understood in relation to the Web and, although he makes his point in general terms, it would certainly seem true in terms of young people. The Internet offers an environment of sound, still photographs, moving images and text; documents in many different languages are available; new material produced specially for the Web is provided as well as older documents that originally took paper form; the creators of content on the Web are diverse and their work is characterized by wide ranging degrees of authority and objectivity; what is available varies in its currency and there may be few clues as to its age.

There is little evidence to indicate, however, that, amidst such heterogeneity, youngsters using the Web exercise sufficient discrimination in their approaches to search in an efficient or effective manner and to arrive, ultimately, at the best material for their purposes. In recent years, Shenton has conducted four research projects involving teenagers in an English high school catering for learners aged between thirteen and eighteen (Shenton, 2007b; Shenton, 2007d; Shenton, in press b; Shenton and Johnson, in press). Whilst watching the pupils at work, he has noticed that a particular pattern is typically apparent when they are finding and using information for assignments. It involves going immediately to an Internet browser, accessing a search engine (which almost always takes the form of “Google”), entering an obvious keyword or phrase to represent the matter in question, clicking on the link to the first site listed, examining it cursorily for the information required, copying any appropriate content, pasting this into a “Word” file and accepting the material with the minimum editing necessary. This behavior is consistent with Smith and Hepworth’s (2007) observation that, at worst, pupils undertaking school assignments “merely present unprocessed information downloaded from the World Wide Web” (p. 5). Empirical research conducted by other investigators reaffirms the lack of sophistication in the information-seeking approaches taken by youngsters. Williams (1999), for example, reports that “in response to the question ‘How do you find things on the Internet?’ the general reply was that ‘I just tell it what I want to know’” (p. 319). Chung and Neuman (2007) go so far as to conclude that their teenage research subjects believed that “the process of information retrieval was a simple type-and-click operation” (p. 1514). It would appear that such attitudes are not limited to school pupils. Jackson and Banwell (2005) discovered that Further Education students in north-eastern England also performed a series of actions that effectively simplified the information search. Some are identical to those observed by Shenton. They include restricting their searches to “Google” and cutting and pasting “information into essays without passing it through their brains” (Jackson & Banwell, 2005, p. 42). These actions are, of course, far removed from the widely advocated approach of making an informed decision on the appropriate media in relation to which a search should be carried out, carefully determining the tools to be employed, varying the specificity of the search terms in the light of the initial results, accumulating a body of useful information and constructing an end-product on the basis of an understanding that has been developed from the totality of the material.

In the late 1970s, long before the arrival of the Internet in schools, libraries and the home, Burke (1978) highlighted how a preoccupation with immediacy was leading to the presentation of information which might be used “to foster understanding and reason” (p. 294) in forms which were so superficial that opportunities for the user to gain a full comprehension of the key issues were limited. In Burke’s words, content was being sacrificed for stimulus. The argument may well apply today in terms of system facilities for information retrieval, if not the material itself. If, in the current electronic age, it becomes clear to developers that the young user is paying scant regard to the higher level facilities that an information system may offer and is prepared to make no more than a “quick and dirty” search, this raises the possibility that only the most basic methods of retrieval will be provided in the future and the consequent potential of the system to make a meaningful contribution to learning may be reduced. Paradox four may be summarized as follows: despite the sophistication of today’s “information age,” youngsters frequently follow a very basic formula for action when finding and using information.

Relevance of advocated practices
The fifth and sixth paradoxes relate to further deviations from “textbook” information-seeking. Many models of information skills attach great importance to the assessment by learners of the accuracy of information that they encounter in sources. One of the ten stages in the EXIT model proposed by Wray and Lewis (1995) is that of “evaluating information” (p. 7); the checklist for “using information well” offered by the National Council for Educational Technology (1993) emphasizes the importance of the individual making decisions as to what material he or she may discard, and Marland (1981), in his seminal “Information Skills Curriculum,” suggests various criteria that should be borne in mind by pupils when they are deciding which information resources should be chosen for use. Accuracy is a key factor for consideration in all these models. Graef (2000) believes that, in practice, material may be selected by users after testing the content in front of them against their past experience. In many instances, this may involve comparing the information with one’s own knowledge of the subject. Speaking on the BBC radio program, The Wikipedia Story (2007), McHenry, however, draws attention the futility of this approach, arguing, “You really have to know the subject you’re looking up to the point where you needn’t be looking it up.” This situation is similar to the paradox discussed earlier in which a reader has to know the approximate spelling of a word in order to find it in an ordinary dictionary. Here, too, the individual’s knowledge may be such that information-seeking action is unnecessary. An alternative strategy for verification may see users compare the information involved with that in other sources. Yet, if all the sources to be scrutinized take the form of Web pages, those chosen to provide confirmation must be selected with care since the accuracy of these, too, may be open to question, and they may even be based on the material found in the source in question. The production of such secondary sources can, in fact, very easily lead to a vicious circle of inaccuracy. Paradox five may be summarized as follows: verification of information within sources is widely advocated but strategies for implementing this process may be of questionable real value.

One of the assumptions which typically underpins linear models of information skills and those offering a series of prompting questions, in particular, such as the work of Marland (1981) and Coles, Shepherd and White (1982), is that sources are not considered by the learner until the nature of the information need has been clarified. In contrast, much research into IB would suggest that these two aspects genuinely interact, rather than form separate stages within a chronological sequence. Indeed, a knowledge of information sources may, on occasion, actually lead the process. This gives rise to a paradox somewhat akin to that of “the chicken and the egg.” Perhaps the various steps should be recast as elements whose position within the overall information-seeking experience is variable. By no means all models of information skills are linear in character, of course, and indeed those whose elements are rigidly placed, rather than left fluid, tend to be older frameworks, devised during the 1980s. Lowe and Eisenberg (2005), in fact, cite a series of models more recent than those of Marland and Coles et al when making their claim that, whilst information problem-solving is characterized by the use of specific skills, their application is iterative and flexible.

In exploring the criteria influencing the choice of topic for academic assignments, Shenton and Dixon (2004a) discovered that the second most frequently articulated factor among their participants was that of information availability. After they had been briefed on the work to be tackled, pupils who took this line used their awareness of sources that were known to be accessible to them to determine the selection of topic and thus, in broad terms, the nature of the information need. Some youngsters opted for topics that they knew were addressed by books either at home or owned by relatives; for others, the information source took the form of people. In most cases, the pupils whose decisions were based on information availability selected their topics soon after being presented with the task. The behavior of one fourteen-year-old was different, however, as her decision was made after interaction with an information source. Asked to investigate for a history project any of the leaders of countries taking part in the Second World War, she entered the term, “war leaders,” when interrogating the Encarta CD-ROM encyclopedia and decided to concentrate on Mussolini after discovering that more information appeared to be devoted to him than any of his counterparts in the other countries. Similarities can be identified here between this girl’s behavior and the actions of individuals experiencing the “prefocus exploration” stage within Kuhlthau’s “information search process” (Kuhlthau, 1988, p. 238). Kuhlthau explains how learners at this point are intent on locating relevant information with a view to finding a focus for their work.

For Shenton and Dixon’s (2004a) research subjects, the interactive nature of information needs and source investigation was evident again later in their project tasks. After they located material in response to issues of an initially general nature, several youngsters began to appreciate that information was required on increasingly precise aspects, as their understanding of the topic and its issues developed. Shenton and Dixon (2004a) dub needs of this type “progressional subject needs” (p. 27). Sometimes there were shortcomings in the subject coverage provided in the sources already consulted which prompted the pupils to look further afield.

Whilst the researchers might well have predicted the emergence of needs of the progressional type and indeed, years before the project, needs of this kind had been noted by commentators such as Faibisoff and Ely (1976), Krikelas (1983) and Westbrook (1993), another way in which materials led to information needs was entirely unexpected. Shenton and Dixon (2005) discovered that “source-dependent needs” also came to light (p. 25). These arose neither because the youngster was keenly interested in a particular topic nor because the individual was motivated by external pressure, such as a school assignment. Rather a source known to provide information on an area of passing interest was readily available. In none of these cases was the youngster sufficiently enthusiastic about the subject to investigate it in other ways and would not have sought other sources had the information not been available from the favored provider. A few information needs relating to the content of television shows emerged in response to cues during or after the program. Sometimes the need disappeared when the source ceased to be available. Paradox six may be summarized as follows: information skills models that take a linear, rather than dynamic, perspective often imply that sources are investigated once the need has been determined, but, in real life, instances frequently emerge where a knowledge of sources triggers an information need.

Priorities for the information specialist
The seventh paradox may be termed, “the information professional’s dilemma.” Few, no doubt, would dispute the importance of either librarians learning more about the information needs of youngsters or the wisdom of seizing opportunities to provide effective user education. Shenton (2007c) draws attention, however, to how these two aims may work in opposition. Where user education equips individuals with the knowledge, skills and understanding to search independently for information highly successfully, especially through exploitation of the Web, which forms such an accessible information resource for many youngsters in environments as diverse as the home, the school and public libraries, users will come to rely less heavily, if at all, on assistance from the information specialist. Consequently, the practitioner will have less opportunity to develop, through the reference interview, insights into clients’ information needs. In addition to providing experience upon which the specialist can draw in the future, the articulations of the inquirer in the exchange within the reference interview can be recorded in a log of the type outlined by Norton and Goodgion (1980) and may form an important source of data for formal research. The fact that such research is based on “real” inquiries and utilizes language actually used by clients at the time when the needs were expressed bestows on the work a naturalistic dimension often lacking in research that is reliant on the gathering of data via more contrived methods, such as questionnaires. With any decline in the profile of the reference interview, the importance of finding out about information needs in other ways becomes correspondingly greater. The specialist may fall back on “inferential” approaches, such as the use of existing theories of child development, community profiles and coverage of the young population’s more general needs, as well as drawing on personal experience and anecdotal evidence from colleagues. Paradox seven may be summarized as follows: library goers’ reduced reliance on the information professional that may result from effective programs of user education may deprive such staff of key opportunities to learn more about the information needs of their patrons.

Terminology
The eighth paradox is the first of two that relate to problems associated with language. In North America, especially, the term “research” is applied by many teachers and librarians to project work in schools. Kuhlthau (1994) describes a “research assignment” as one that requires learners to address a matter which demands information beyond a course textbook but which may be found via the investigation of an organized collection of materials (p. 5). Ultimately, the individual will make some form of presentation of what has been learnt. In Higher Education, however, the term “research” is given a quite different meaning. Here it involves the first-hand collection, analysis and use of data to explore a particular issue; published material on the subject is likely to be employed only in the preparation of a literature review and in closing reflections on how the new discoveries relate to the established knowledge base. Indeed, Preece (1994) argues that research in the true sense must increase “the sum… of human knowledge” (p. 5), and he contrasts this with the kind of activity that Kuhlthau describes. He asserts, “the re-arrangement of what is already known is not in itself the essence of research unless it leads on to … new knowledge” (p. 6). Thus “research” can be said to have meanings that are entirely different. Although few words are as ambiguous as “research,” another with a similar diversity of connotations is “original.” An expression such as “original material” can, of course, refer to old documents produced at the time of a certain event, yet the phrase may also be applied to the new work of a pupil that represents the individual’s personal understanding and which is not merely plagiarized from existing sources.

In addition, other terms are often used in a broader sense than may be assumed on first consideration. Whilst “information-seeking” might justifiably be deemed to refer specifically to the active pursuit of information and, indeed, a definition of this kind is favored by Case in one of the foremost textbooks on IB (Case, 2007), a different line is taken by Erdelez (1999). She believes information-seeking to be “a generic term for all types of information acquisition” (p. 25). A comparable view is taken by Kari (1998), who argues that information-seeking includes the accidental discovery of information as well as more purposeful behavior. Paradox eight may be summarized as follows: certain phrases used in the “information world” which are designed to explain are ambiguous and may actually cause confusion rather than enlightenment.

The penultimate paradox embraces the fact that some expressions relating to IB or the “information world” may be regarded as oxymoronic. Perhaps the most obvious examples are those of “passive attention” and “passive search,” which Wilson and Walsh (1996) propose to represent forms of information acquisition. The authors concede that the latter, in particular, “seems like a contradiction in terms” (p. 23). A similar argument may be made with regard to the expression, “information literacy.” Traditionally, as The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) notes, “literacy” has meant “the ability to read and write” (p. 1076) but, in recent years, its use has been widened and applied in connection with a range of other skills. “Visual literacy,” for example, is a term now frequently used in the fields of fine art and media studies, and the expression “information literacy” is, of course, today one of the major buzz phrases in our own discipline. Nevertheless, dissenting voices can still be heard amid LIS scholars and practitioners. In a trenchant and controversial article, Williams (2006) claims that information skills are insufficiently fundamental to “amount to a ‘literacy.’” It is also pertinent to observe that the expression “information literacy” has not gained widespread adoption beyond the discipline of LIS. In a study of the quality of school libraries in north-east England, Shenton (2007a) noticed that the phrase was not even employed by OFSTED, the body responsible for monitoring the country’s educational standards in schools, in any of the forty-four school inspection reports that he read. Moreover, Smith and Hepworth (2005) point out that the term is not explicitly used in England’s National Curriculum.

Perhaps less contentious is the phrase “electronic library,” although here, as well, the combination of two ideas would appear to place the notion of a library of this kind in direct opposition to what has traditionally been intended by the word “library.” The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) states that “library” derives specifically from the Latin word, “librarius” which may be defined as “relating to books” (p. 1063). It may be argued, of course, that the meaning of “library,” too, has been broadened of late. Bawden (2001) claims that no longer can the word be assumed to refer to “a physical stock of books, journals, etc” but it has come to represent any “organised collection of information resources, partly or wholly digital, and networked” (p. 97). Nevertheless, research reported by Nesset and Shenton (in press) has found that the understanding of “library” by many young children does not include such a concept. Working with forty-five Canadians between the ages of eight and ten in May 2006, the authors discovered that the overwhelming majority of them still thought of libraries as providers of books, and only three of the young informants indicated that they associated libraries with computers. Paradox nine may be summarized as follows: new expressions within library and information science frequently juxtapose contrasting ideas or apply long-accepted terms in unfamiliar contexts, thereby creating uncertainty.

Research
The tenth and last paradox refers to a possible mismatch between constructs that have been evolved in research to represent user behavior and the reality of this behavior as it is actually practiced. Various attempts have been made in the last thirty-five years to construct typologies of young people’s information needs. Perhaps the best known are those by Minudri (1974), Gratch (1978), Walter (1994), Latrobe and Havener (1997), Shenton and Dixon (2003a) and Agosto and Hughes-Hassell (2006a, 2006b). Seldom, however, does such work acknowledge one of the key barriers in any attempt to identify patterns in young people’s information needs, namely the fact noted by Herman (1983) and Gross (2000) that many are unique to an individual. The latter goes so far as to assert that some derive from youngsters’ “specific life situations and ... are idiosyncratically their own” (Gross, 2000, p. 10). Any attempt by a researcher to create broad groups in the face of such diversity is bound to result in a set of superficial constructs that are unlikely either to offer insight into the reality of individual needs as they are actually experienced or to do full justice to the particular personal circumstances that inspire them.

A similar issue arises when researchers look to formulate models that reduce IB to a series of stages and sequences. Given that educators frequently encourage learners to develop flexible problem-solving perspectives to finding information, and stress that no single method or formula can be applied successfully in every case, coupled with the fact that many youngsters employ their own expedient methods to provide short-cuts to information (Shenton and Dixon, 2004b), it would seem simplistic for a researcher to try to create a single model that represents, even in generalized terms, the totality of IB evident within the group under study.

It is not only outcomes of research, such as typologies and models, which may be considered to present only a partial picture of IB. Further problems emerge in the notions underpinning concepts themselves. Although a wide range of definitions of information-seeking exist, a key theme within many is that it involves the construction of knowledge. Kuhlthau (1999), for example, explains how information-seeking can be viewed as a means by which “a person is actively constructing a new understanding from the information encountered” (p. 15). Marchionini (1995) takes a similar view, describing information-seeking as “a process in which humans purposefully engage in order to change their state of knowledge” (p. 5). Notwithstanding the fact that the work of Shenton and Dixon (2004a) discussed in coverage of paradox six above reveals that certainly some youngsters do develop their knowledge of a subject during their interactions with information sources, there is ample evidence to suggest that the kind of learning that Kuhlthau and Marchionini describe is often limited, since, in academic contexts, after finding information pertinent to their work, pupils have frequently been seen to be concerned with merely copying material. Baldwin (1992) particularly associates this practice with the use of difficult works where the young reader is presented with too much information and lacks understanding of it. She concludes unequivocally, “children gain little knowledge from copying” (p. 26). An indication of the possible scale of the problem is provided by McGregor and Streitenberger (1998), who report that almost half of their teenage Texan pupils undertaking an English assignment “put little effort into really making sense of their topic” (What do the errors mean?, para. 3). Many spent much time transcribing material from information sources. Most of this activity merely “led to inappropriate copying or plagiarism” (What do the errors mean?, para. 5). Perhaps the most damning single instance in which work associated with finding and using information has led in no sense to the construction of knowledge is supplied by Laverty (2002). She recounts the experience of one female pupil and includes her own account: “I did a project on the pyramids of Egypt … I ended up with a folder of 12 pages of information and I didn’t understand a word” (p. 227). The final paradox may be summarized as follows: even concepts and constructs that have been developed specifically to aid our understanding of user behavior may misrepresent the nature of aspects of it as it takes place in real life.

Conclusions

In their entirety, the ten paradoxes reveal issues associated with IB that impinge on the lives of those in such varied groups as users, information professionals and researchers studying the phenomenon. Some are inherently practical, and relate either directly to interactions with information or to strategies for providing access to it, whilst others may be considered one step removed in that they pertain to scholarship in the area. The focus of this paper has been that of issues affecting children and young people, yet some may well be applied to information users of any age. Similarly, “the information professional’s dilemma” can arise in a range of libraries, not only those specifically catering for youngsters.

The purpose of this work has not been to propose solutions but rather to highlight the complexity of certain aspects of IB. Although the paradoxes have here been explored in a single sequence, they can also be grouped according to one of several categories.

1. Many of the paradoxes identified address discrepancies between the relatively esoteric world of principles, models, concepts and specialist vocabulary on the one hand and the more practical territory of everyday understandings and users’ real-life information-related situations on the other.
2. Closely related to these paradoxes are those in which trends associated with the development of the “information world” differ from or, at worst, are incompatible with the needs, actions or abilities of users.
3. Those in the third group of paradoxes demonstrate how, by attending to one particular matter of concern, an individual or organization may take action that adversely affects another matter which may seem unrelated. This pattern arises in terms of both users and information professionals. With regard to the former, for example, convenience may be favored at the expense of accessing accurate information, and attempts by information specialists to promote independent information-seeking by clients may result in fewer opportunities to learn about their needs.
4. The final paradox does not fit comfortably into any of the previous categories and must be considered separately. Here ambiguities arise in the use of language. Whereas the paradoxes in categories one and two tend to deal with variations between users and those in other groups, such as information professionals and researchers, and category three paradoxes involve dilemmas that may be confronted by a particular individual or organization, differences in the understanding of terminology are here shown to emerge across different researchers, and between school teachers/librarians and Higher Education staff.

Table 1 offers a summary by setting down all the paradoxes in turn and attaching each to one of these categories.

Table 1: Relationship between the ten paradoxes and the categories that summarize their themes

The scope of this paper has been deliberately restricted to anomalies within the field of information behavior that may be detected specifically within the LIS domain. Many of those addressed are especially concerned with the information-seeking dimension. Productive territory for future coverage of paradoxes may well be found in identifying pertinent discrepancies between issues that emerge in information science and contrasting themes that arise in education. One would appear to lie in the fact that, although the aim of producing information literate children is likely to meet with universal support, rarely do information skills form a significant component in teacher training programs. This reflects an overall lack of synergy across the librarianship/education divide.

References

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Author Note:
Dr. Andrew K. Shenton is a former lecturer in the Division of Information and Communication Studies within Northumbria University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences in England. He gained a doctorate in 2002 after an investigation of young people’s information-seeking behavior, and has had over fifty papers published in Italy, the USA and his native Britain. They have been cited in books, journal articles and conference papers, as well as forming recommended reading for modules of university courses that have included PhD programs. Andrew currently divides his time between writing, mentoring higher degree students and working with pupils in the resource centre of a school in north-east of England. He can be contacted by post at 92 Claremont Road, Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear, NE26 3TU, England, United Kingdom.

Disclaimer
The views expressed in articles are those of the author(s) concerned and do not necessarily represent the views of the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) Inc.

Last updated 7 January 2008 (KSB)