Information seeking

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Information seeking is the process of trying to find information, whether from people or from technology. It is related to information retrieval (IR), but not the same thing. IR tools are usually designed for information professionals and assume that the needed information exists and a good query will find it. Everyday internet searching feels different from formal IR, but search engines still use IR ideas.

Since the late 1990s, researchers have studied how casual users interact with internet search engines, but the topic is not fully understood. IR focuses on technology, algorithms, and metrics like precision and recall. Information seeking is more human-centered and open-ended: you may not know if an answer exists, and the searching process can teach you what you need.

Much library and information science research looks at how professionals seek information in their work. Studies have examined librarians, academics, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and other groups. A key early model by Leckie, Pettigrew, and Sylvain (1996) described professionals’ information-seeking behavior in a way that could apply across professions, encouraging more study. Wilkinson later adapted this model for lawyers.

More recent work uses the broader idea of information gathering that fits real work life and skills. Theories from psychology and communication—such as Zipf’s Principle of Least Effort, Brenda Dervin’s sense-making, and Elfreda Chatman’s life in the round—have been used to explain information seeking. Researchers also borrow ideas from other disciplines.

Information seeking is usually seen as dynamic and non-linear. It involves a mix of thoughts, feelings, and actions as people search for information. Scholarly reviews and books summarize this field, and studies show that at work people rely on both other people and information sources (like documents and databases). They often spend similar total time on both, though the way that time is distributed can vary by source. People tend to receive information passively more than they actively seek it, and this pattern also appears when they share information with others.

In information science, information seeking, information retrieval, and information behavior are all studied. Wilson (1999) proposed a nested model to show how these ideas relate: information seeking is the activity, its causes and consequences, and the steps involved.