Knowledge of information behaviour and its relevance to the design of people‐centred information products and services

Introduction

This article first explores the current trends in society that have led to the knowledge of information behaviour becoming increasingly important. Trends are explored including: the commodification of information; personalization; information overload; inclusion; the development of virtual learning environments. The article then provides an ontology of information behaviour research, identifying categories of knowledge and abstraction associated with the subject domain. This ontology is then exemplified by citing cases and using screen shots that visually show how this knowledge can be applied in the design of people‐centred inclusive information products and services.

Background

Understanding the consumer of data, information and knowledge is becoming increasingly important in relation to the design and development of electronic information products and services. This is partly because it is technically possible and also because of expectations and pressures in society. For example, corporate portals, web based information services, information retrieval tools and learning environments and also electronic environments where products are bought and sold are increasingly “tailoring” their services to the individual and the community they serve. Face‐to‐face information services, especially in the area of special libraries but also other libraries and information services, for many years have tailored their services to meet the needs of end users. Recently, a combination of factors have meant that we need to provide electronic access to data, information and knowledge from a distance. These factors include the growing number of potential users who value and need information but cannot, and may not want to, be serviced face‐to‐face and, of course, increased processing power. In addition, we have the advantages of the client server architecture where local and remote processing can take place and the opportunity for remote access to electronic resources via broadband telecommunication networks. Therefore, a combination of social norms and technological capability has led to a need to create electronic environments where people can become informed and that relate to the complex cultural and psychological needs of the consumer.

These “drivers” are exemplified by the iPod, a brand of portable, digital, audio player, designed and marketed by Apple Computer, that provides an example of how knowledge of the consumer has been applied to the provision of a successful information product, to the extent that the technology or device (iPod) is now becoming a brand, a “badge of consumables” (See Figure 1 and Figure 2). Note the phrase “which iPod are you” implying personalisation, the visual allusions of freedom and warmth given by the dancer. In the textual description the use of phrases such as “run your thumb round the click wheel”, “there's no limit to where it will take you” (Apple, 2006) appeals to the sensual and the need for excitement. In this case design is not just about functionality or making something visually pleasing it is to do with designing for a community with specific needs living in a specific social context albeit across a wide range of demographics. The mobile phone is evolving in a similar way. To achieve this success a great deal needs to be known about the potential user. The technologies cited are, of course, not perfect representations of what can be done. These devices, for example, with their small buttons and tiny screens may be difficult for people with limited sight or dexterity to use. However, they do indicate how technological/informational solutions increasingly need to embody knowledge of the consumer and that functionality alone is not enough and that there is evidently a growing recognition of the need to develop usable, aesthetic designs that relate to the work/life context of the information consumer and satisfy their information needs. A brief and high level discussion of some of the key “drivers” that are leading to increasingly people‐centred information products follows.

Societal phenomena

The exponential growth in the quantity of information and the increased value being placed on the systematic use of data, information and knowledge has become a truism. We even use terms such as “information society” and “knowledge based economy” to describe our socio‐economic context. Products and services are constantly evolving as a result of this context, whether “free” informal blogs (electronic discussion forums), high value real time and archival information services such as those sold by Reuters or data and text mining solutions, now valued as a multi million pound (UK£) industry.

The value placed on information and the need to filter the huge quantity of available information has led to a number of people‐centred solutions. Traditionally, information science professionals set up Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) initiatives or alerts, both paper based and electronic, and proactively provided “tailored” information to consumers. In some cases these were based on elaborate manually constructed profiles of users' information needs. Organisations, such as Newsedge (see Figure 3), have more recently developed technologies that filter streams of information such as business news and enable the distribution of information to end users. Personalised electronic newspapers have also been offered with the help of “intelligent agents”. However, maintaining a user profile that relates to ongoing and often changing needs, let alone the complex nature of those needs, has proved to be extremely difficult.

Various automated methods are being applied to help solve some of the problems. Organisations, such as Autonomy, have developed technologies that automatically classify, tag and enable the selective dissemination information. However, the automatic classification of content and matching this with a profile of an individual and their changing needs is still challenging. Objective information about the success of such solutions is hard to find due to commercial sensitivity. At Loughborough University we are currently working on an information system that filters and presents information in a way that corresponds to the profile of the user in terms of the amount, complexity and pictorial content of the information that the user desires. The profile of the user is determined by their medical condition and their need for subject matter. In addition, data about what they have read also helps to determine the information they are presented. For example, a person experiencing severe fatigue and reduced visual ability, is assumed to prefer information that results in less cognitive load hence including less text, less complexity of language and more pictorial content. This work uses marked up material using extensible mark‐up language (XML) to code information objects and is processed using extensible style sheet transformation (XSLT) in the COCOON environment to transform and create output that relates to the user profile which was captured and stored in a database. The target community for this research is people with Multiple Sclerosis who have diverse and changing needs. Other initiatives have taken place in the Consumer Health Informatics arena. The majority of these initiatives have used data from the patient's record to provide “tailored” information leaflets that relate to the patient's condition and treatment (Bental et al., 1999). In the Health Informatics field it has been recognised that people are more likely to read and act on information that is personalized (Duman, 2003). As mentioned earlier, other technologies may feed into personalised information provision such as artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing and text mining.

In the area of consumer information communication technology (ICT) products have begun to be influenced by ideas common to other consumer goods and a desire to emulate, in the electronic domain, the experience of the world where people interact face‐to‐face or with physical information products. This has led to the evolution of products such as the iPod described above and the personalisation of electronic interaction including features such as “My Basket” and the ability to tailor the product to meet individual needs. Systems monitor the consumer's information behaviour, as did market researchers in the past, and use this data to make suggestions to consumers that may facilitate their information seeking such as finding other relevant “resources” in the hope that they will view or buy these. The media vendor Amazon takes this approach where suggestions are presented as if coming from a peer rather than the vendor and hence have greater apparent value.

The recognized need and opportunity to personalise information environments is also demonstrated by the provision of personalisation functionality that enables the consumer's learning environment to be adapted to correspond to the needs and wants of the consumer in terms of the use of colour, layout and content. Exactly what needs this satisfies is unclear, perhaps the need to filter but also for a feeling of control and identity, the need to enter a dialogue and negotiate preferences as well as the aesthetics of creating a familiar, friendly environment. Many services have gone down this path including Google, Yahoo and MSN, as shown in Figure 4.

Another social phenomenon that increasingly requires an understanding of people and their interaction with information and having to respond to their needs, is the concept of inclusion. This concept implies that all people in society are perceived to have a right to participate and to be able to access products and services. This ethos, as well factors such as an increasingly disproportionate number of elderly people in society who may have conditions that could impact on their interaction with technology and information products and services, has led to legislation. This includes the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK (Disability Discrimination Act, 1995) that insists that products and services, including learning resources (SENDA, 2001), must show that the developers are at least attempting to make them accessible to all. Similar legislation has been implemented elsewhere in the world. Human computer interface (HCI) guidelines have also been developed to facilitate access (W3C, 1999; IBM, 2006). Organisations that undertake advocacy on behalf of marginalized groups, such as the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), the Dyslexia Association and MENCAP (who provide help and advocacy for people with learning difficulties), also provide advice to help designers meet the needs of people. Figure 5 shows a service that can be accessed via a range of adaptive technologies and where the interface can be adapted to meet individual needs.

The Google search engine and databases such as the Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) as well as some complex web sites, such as the BBC's, have also shown that, in spite of their sophistication, they can be developed in a way that they are accessible via adaptive technology. However, the impact of inclusion on the design of electronic information products seems relatively basic and patchy. Existing gateways to academic databases, for example, may not be accessible to people who are blind. A recent study (Khan, 2006) showed that the 2005 version of the Metalib gateway/portal, provided by Ex‐Libris, was inaccessible to users of the JAWS screenreader due to excessive use of Java scripting and poor tagging of features as were the interfaces of vendor specific online database. However, Ex‐Libris does intend to rectify this in their 2006 software release. This is disappointing since the availability of documents in an electronic form should make access easier for people with impaired sight because they can be read using a screen reader that converts text into speech. Few concessions are made, generally, for people with cognitive difficulties, for example dyslexia. People with dyslexia tend to find it difficult dealing with large bodies of text, spelling correctly, and remembering where they are in the search process. Unfortunately, these needs are not generally supported by current products and services, such as, online public access catalogues (OPAC) and online databases and other information retrieval (IR) tools. Although the spell‐check function in Google, “Did you mean  … ”, is very popular with this community for obvious reasons as it is for people whose first language is not English. Little has been done to address the needs of people with severe learning difficulties. Although, recently, research has started to explore this area (Williams, 2006).

Another domain where people‐centred design is starting to play a significant role is the development of virtual learning environments. Specific examples of these will be discussed later. However, at Nottingham Trent University in the UK and also in Eindhoven in Holland people have been trying to develop personalized learning environments using similar technology (XML, XSLT, COCOON) to that being used for personalization research at Loughborough. In particular, they have been researching how to author learning resources that can be provided to the learners in a way that relates to their level of knowledge and what they have already read. They also hope to provide learning resources in a way that relates to learning style. These and related studies have led to personalization models that include, for example, the domain model, the goal and constraint model, the user model, the adaptation model and the presentation model (Cristea and Mooij, 2003).

There are, therefore, a number of social, economic and technological factors that are leading to a need to develop people‐centred information products and services. There is a fundamental need to understand people and their interaction with information and learning environments. In information science this has been an area of research for many years. The next section attempts to map this knowledge and hence create a high level ontology of what is termed the field of information behaviour (IB) that encompasses passive and active information seeking and use. Other disciplines and areas of research and development, such as human computer interface design (HCI), adaptive hypermedia, the personalization of electronic commerce etc., as indicated above, have developed insights that relate to people‐centred information products and services. However, I would argue that it is information science that has developed the most detailed body of knowledge of the information consumer and their interaction with information services and products due to its obsession with the provision of these resources. This has been driven by a desire to develop more successful information services, better information retrieval products, and a richer understanding of information behaviour in general.

An ontology of information behaviour research

The area of user studies and courses run by information science departments such as “services to users” or “user oriented services” reflects the concern with the information consumer. For many years information science practitioners have done surveys of their users/non‐users to help indicate the value of, or demand for, information and particular services. In a similar vein, academics have studied communities to reach a better understanding of information behaviour and needs. These have included studies of communities of common practice such as social workers (Wilson et al., 1979), business people (Choo, 1994) etc. as well as people who share common information needs with regard to an aspect of their life, such as people with cancer (Williamson and Manaszewicz, 2002). Some studies have stemmed from practitioners employing academics to study their target community with the objective of developing or improving information services. Findings from a recent study involving people with multiple sclerosis led to the improvement of the MSTrust's web site and the promotion of specific types of information (Hepworth et al., 2003). Current research in the Department of Information Science, at Loughborough University, is looking into the information needs of children of parents who have cancer. The fieldwork is taking place in Malaysia and should feed into future information provision where information is currently lacking.

These studies have led to a great deal of knowledge about how to develop services that relate to the specific needs of different people and also how to go about determining these needs. Some of this knowledge, concerning scientists and social scientists (Brittain, 1970), has either been applied in the design and development of information retrieval systems such as online databases or at least influenced their development. However, much of this knowledge has not been codified and has not found its way outside the information science field.

In the area of information retrieval an understanding of the peoples' information retrieval experiences and the processes they go through has also led to the design and development of innovative IR systems. For example the Bookhouse project in Denmark that was aimed at users and non‐users of the public library. Researchers, such as Hearst et al. (1996), have also experimented with different ways of representing information objects such as citation links or the relevance of retrieved items using tiles, hyperbolic trees, rooms, three dimensional maps that may facilitate peoples' interaction and use of information. However, these have yet to find their way into commonly available information products.

Studies of peoples' information retrieval experiences have also led to an understanding of what the people need to know and what they find difficult when involved in information seeking, solving problems or becoming informed. These studies have fed into the general knowledge of how people use IR systems such as search engines (Spink et al., 1998). These studies have also fed into conceptions of information literacy (Eisenberg, 1990; Bruce, 1995) and the design of information literacy training courses (Hepworth and Wema, 2006) as well as information product design. The design of the Alexandria library product, (see Figure 6), reflects a detailed knowledge of geography students and their learning context in terms of content and functionality.

From the earlier studies of communities several authors have gone on to explore IB in its own right and develop models of information behaviour. Dervin (1983) developed the sense‐making methodology that was both a theory about how people experience information seeking and also a technique for investigating these situations i.e. the micro‐time line interview. Wilson (1999) developed a number of models that helped people think about IB in terms of how people satisfy their information needs and what influenced their information behaviour. Other authors have put forward conceptual models that help to understand the facets of IB (Hepworth, 2004). A recent book, Theories of Information Behaviour (Fisher et al., 2005) presents a smorgasbord of different aspects and approaches to the study of IB. Approaches vary in terms of the focus of the study and the epistemological background. The book demonstrates the breadth of knowledge and the complexity of factors and explanations associated with IB as well as indicating what is not known. Other books by Nicholas (2000), Case (2002), Marchionini (1997), and articles by a number of authors including Ingweresen (1996), Spink (1997), Leckie et al. (1996), Vakkari (1998) and many others indicate the substantive nature of the topic as well as the current knowledge. Research and knowledge tend to fall into one or more of the areas shown in Table I.

Over the last 20 years research has largely stemmed from a cognitive perspective i.e. focusing on the individual. These studies have identified different cognitive states associated with IB. They tend to focus on the moment of interaction with an information system or service and tasks, stages and associated states including: cognitive (thinking processes), connative (inherent factors that effect motivation and preferred ways of learning) and affective (feelings). They look at how information needs are translated either passively or in an active way into actions and the process of becoming informed and in some cases using and communicating information. The latter tends to be less researched. Cognitive phenomena including thinking skills such as recognition of relevance, analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, evaluation etc. and thinking processes such as defining a problem, (Eisenberg, 1990) or knowledge of the subject/system/resources (Allen, 1991), that arise or impact on IB have been identified. Connative phenomena such as self‐efficacy, locus of control (Wilson, 1999) and learning styles (Ford et al., 1993) have also been shown to be associated with different types of IB. Research that is related identifies people who share IB such as monitors and blunters (Miller and Mangan, 1983). Other studies highlight the affective domain and what people feel when they are involved in IB. Kuhlthau (1991), for example, charted the emotions associated with a student undertaking the various stages in a research task. Generally, such researchers relate their findings concerning psychological states to information seeking (IS) tasks and the use of specific resources.

Studies that tend to focus on people in a certain social context were mentioned earlier. They generally try to identify information needs that cut across or are clustered in the community. These studies concentrate on the information seeking behaviour (ISB) (Bates, 1989; Hert, 1997; Hepworth, 1999, 2003) and the use of and need for content (subject matter) and the nature and form of that content, such as value, authority, style, depth etc. and its usability. They also highlight the difficulties people experience when trying to satisfy information needs. Although these studies provide a clear indication of needs and are set within a social context the impact of normative values is relatively unexplored.

Few studies look at how the wider aspects of society, such as power structures, may have an impact on IB. Chatman (1999) is one of the few people who have taken a broader sociological and anthropological perspective. However, a recent study in Ghana (Nikoi, 2006) about the IB of non‐government organisations (NGO) staff highlighted the impact of local, national and international forces and how they affected IB. For example, the “participative” nature of development projects is currently valued by international donors. As a result the NGO workers have changed their information gathering behaviour to reflect this.

The phenomena, both external and internal to the individual, that researchers have put forward as having an impact on the information consumer and affecting their needs and behaviour with regard to learning and the use of information products and services, can be summarized in Table II.

As noted authors who focus on the impact of the wider cultural context, such as the hierarchical nature of society and the effect on IB, such as Hofstede (2001), are rare. Little has been done to incorporate or support such differences when designing information products and services. Local social context studies tend to look at a group within society, such as the elderly, and identify the IB characteristics of that group. Authors with a bias towards the individual tend to focus on factors that drive or affect the individual's IB. The term demographics is included here to refer to factors such as gender, age, physiological condition and so on that may have significance at all three levels of abstraction shown in Table II. Researchers have, of course, tended to focus on different dimensions and have taken different epistemological standpoints to help explain IB. This has led to various perceptions of IB where emphasis is given to different factors and different vocabularies have evolved, in a relative unsystematic way, to describe phenomena. From a positivist perspective a rich array of societal and social factors are seen to lead to the creation of an information environment, the design of which is influenced by the characteristics of the individual and their ISB. The IB of the individual may, in turn, be affected by the external information environment as well as their internal psychological “environment”. From a social constructivist perspective we can interpret this as a collection of shared labels and meanings i.e. an ontology of what we study which has have evolved to help us understand IB.

Therefore, an understanding of the interplay between phenomena associated with IB can be seen to be important. For example, demographic data, such as medical condition and age, may be associated with cognitive phenomena, such as levels of knowledge of technology or a subject domain, and also with connative phenomena such as high or low self‐efficacy. It is a combination of these factors that will determine peoples' IB and needs. Understanding the interplay of these factors as well as their significance in different contexts enables one to design an information intervention to meet the requirements of this particular scenario or user profile. In fact, a great deal is already known about IB and the factors that affect IB. However, few information products and services reflect a detailed understanding of these factors.

Is there evidence of the application of this knowledge?

The following exemplifies how and the extent to which this knowledge of IB is being applied in the design of people‐centred information products and services. It also provides an indication of the usefulness of the ontology outlined above.

There has been a rapid development of electronic information products and services. To some extent these have followed a “cart before the horse” development path. In these cases, information products and services are technology driven rather than consumer driven. For example, in a database environment the developer is often primarily interested in communicating the structure of the database so that the user can query it. The user is therefore not helped with the related cognitive processes such as defining the topic they are researching because of the developers' “system driven” view of their product. Not that all successful developments are necessarily consumer driven. After all, it can be difficult to visualize how to apply technology without at least having some experience of what is technically possible. In many cases, technology is launched, people interact with it, and designers adapt the technology and people change their IB. Search engines, for example, initially were limited in terms of their functionality; their help systems and the range of material they gave access to; and have been adapting to meet the needs of users ever since. Nevertheless, some electronic information services and products do show an awareness of the needs of the consumer. The following examples demonstrate this and indicate in what way, and where. Furthermore, these examples point to how current and developing knowledge of IB could be more extensively applied. Having said this, it is not known whether the designers of the products and services cited below consciously addressed the various factors that affect peoples' information need and behaviour. Either way, the designs do address needs associated with specific types of social and individual contexts.

Cognitive needs

Response to the cognitive needs associated with IB by information products and services is patchy and relatively limited. Most electronic information products and services tend to offer access that corresponds to levels of knowledge, for example, simple and advanced interfaces. The latter may also appeal to people who need information for work and need a degree of precision and control to increase the reliability of the search. Search engines initially only had very simple interfaces due to the, perhaps naïve, belief that the algorithms in the background would do all the IR work without the user having to enter a range of criteria – plus they were consciously trying to reduce the cognitive load associated with exact match systems where knowledge of functionality was essential.

While some cognitive processes are catered for others are not. Systems generally do not help to define the nature of the problem or map a subject topic and the related domain before one retrieves articles, references etc.. This has been found to be a cognitively challenging part of the active information seeking process especially when people are trying to address relatively broad and unfamiliar questions. WebBrain is one example of a product where entering terms will result in the generation of related terms that may be useful in helping to visualise and conceptualise the domain (Figure 11).

Recent developments in university library gateways have started to address the cognitive problem of “where should I go for information” bearing in mind that most students enter university unaware of different electronic sources. Gateways and portals have tried to address this problem bringing together material from different sources, allowing metasearching or indicating relevant sources according to subject domain or discipline (Figure 12).

In this case a range of potentially relevant databases is suggested to the user based on the discipline the student is studying. One common interface can then be used to search several databases reducing the knowledge the user needs to have of individual databases and their “native” interfaces. Currently, however, technological problems and commercial issues still limit this kind of solution.

Other cognitive processes such as “chaining” (Ellis, 1989) have been recognised for some time and services such as the Web of Science and SCOPUS enable users to follow articles using the characteristics of one article – such as the author “chain” or the citation “chain” (Figure 13).

A similar notion, but also capitalizing on the fact that it is easier for the person to recognise relevance, rather than specify relevance, is the use of relevance feedback. Thus we see that many IR products offer features such as “More like this” or “Find similar”. However, being able to dynamically define and search for other similar characteristics of information artifacts, such as style of presentation, and then search for them is limited.

Searchers find it difficult to narrow and broaden a search in a systematic way (Hepworth, 2003; Bilal, 2001). Some search engines, however, do now allow “search within” previously retrieved documents and hence indirectly refine the search. Teoma (see Figure 14) used a clustering algorithm to present results according to identified themes. This enabled the searcher to recognise and define the subset of the original query that was really of interest and hence refine the search and so increase precision and reduce information overload. In the past only expert users of command line online databases could do this. Furthermore, Teoma provided links to experts that reflected the users' liking for tips and suggestions from “experts” – supporting a form of knowledge management.

Surfwax, a metasearch engine, enables one to get an overview (Figure 15), a “sitesnap”, of web sites. This allows the user to quickly browse a synopsis of the content of sites before choosing the most useful. Hence, acknowledging the need for users to scan and browse and get an indication of content thus helping the user to sift and choose the most relevant items without going to numerous irrelevant sites. In other words, helping to deal with information overload. Surfwax also extracts potentially useful search terms and makes these available to the user possibly helping them to identify useful terms for searching – a cognitive process that most users find difficult. Unlike most other systems it is also possible to incorporate a searchable thesaurus that may be helpful when searching a body of work concerning a particular subject such as law or education.

It is generally agreed that to recognise relevance is cognitively easier than to define a topic. This, to some extent, explains the success of Yahoo's hierarchical subject headings. The original offering of hierarchical subject headings (Universal Decimal Classifications) with broader and narrower related categories helped the searcher to define and identify what they wanted. In addition, the manual quality control also contributed to the popularity of Yahoo, hence offering a degree of order and filtering by authority not offered by the other early internet search tools hopefully enabling the user to identify good quality information from the mass (Figure 16).

On the whole, the current online databases have simplified their interfaces and functionality over the last 15 years due to the broadening user base. Unfortunately, however, they tend not to proactively help the user deal with common problems such as too much, too little or irrelevant results. Differences in cognitive ability are not catered for, other than simple or advanced which possibly caters to different levels of knowledge. For example, no design concessions are made to people with dyslexia.

Conclusion and recommendations

It seems to be clear that knowledge of the consumer of information is of increasing relevance today due to the growing quantity of, and value placed on, data, information and knowledge. A number of trends in society have been highlighted that support this view. It can also be seen that there is a great deal of knowledge about the information consumer coming from a number of fields but in particular information science, where the information consumer has been the focus of study for many years. This has been partly because of the need to develop and run information services that meet the needs of particular audiences and it has also been an area of general intellectual enquiry. Drawing on the literature and previous research, areas of knowledge that relate to this domain have been mapped in this article and then illustrated through examples of electronic information products and services. It was therefore possible to indicate the value and applicability of this knowledge to information product design and to show the extent to which current electronic information services relate to the cultural, social, psychological and behavioural needs of information consumer. However, many services are still system driven, despite conforming to human computer interface design guidelines, and are not fully people‐centred. In other words, although we can find examples where knowledge of the cultural, social, psychological and behavioural needs of the consumer of information is applied this is still not generally the case. Nor is the full range of factors taken into account. Individual needs and those that stem from the wider cultural and the local social context are, therefore, only partially catered for.

There does seem to be a need to consolidate our knowledge and to apply current knowledge in the design and development of information products and services. This will enable us to evaluate these solutions. For example, do people with severe fatigue really prefer information conveyed in pictorial form? We could then learn from this experience and build on this substantiated knowledge. There is also a need for further research, whether we are developing paper based, hybrid or electronic information products or services, we need to get “inside the brain” and “under the skin” of the consumers of information, understand their culture, their learning context, their needs, their choices, current barriers, potentially useful relevant technologies and possible solutions. In other words, we need to understand the phenomena in society i.e. cultural, environmental and social factors as well as individual factors that are linked to how people learn, their IB and satisfying their information needs so that we can continue to develop successful information products and services. This is hardly surprising, since with most other products or services aimed at the consumer this would be the norm. Even if a product or service is being provided to a broad cross section of society it is still possible to identify clusters of characteristics that cut horizontally across the community and influence their need for data, information and knowledge. Furthermore, it is possible to identify clusters of needs that run vertically through the community. Knowledge from one area can sometimes help another. For example, making information available and accessible to people with learning difficulties may present solutions that could be appropriate for others, such as people who have difficulty reading. I would argue that IB research involving people with special needs may be a particularly fruitful area for research since solutions that address these extreme situations are likely to provide insights into how to better design in general. We are probably in the early stages of understanding the information consumer and IB. However, in our discipline a significant amount is already known due to the long‐standing role of researching and providing information services but this knowledge needs to be codified and applied more generally. One of our responsibilities should be to ensure that this knowledge is accessible to people outside our own discipline who are involved in the development of information products and services.