“describe the fundamental concepts of information-seeking behaviors”
Introduction
Competency J focuses on the different ways in which people being their search for information. In particular, Comp J studies the different kinds of behavior people can exhibit when starting their journey to learn something new. Every person searches for information in a different way; some of us search for information because of curiosity, others because they need to learn something new for a job. These different motivations for learning directly affect the ways in which we seek out information or ask for assistance when looking for new information.
Understanding the different ways in which people seek out information can assist information professionals and others in making sure that content is easily accessible and and easy to find. One of the biggest issues preventing people from learning new information is the perception that finding new information is difficult and time-consuming. The job of an information professional is to break down these perceived obstacles and clear the path for the information-seeker. Other industries use this same idea without even thinking about it. For example, a retail industry might have changed the point of sale (POS) software they have decided to use for their cash registers. The employees are going to feel stressed because they will be expected to know how to use this new system in order to perform their duties at work.
With this level of stress in mind, the leadership team in the store may develop training designed to break down the complex new system into more manageable and easy to remember parts. This will ultimately help to alleviate some of the stress of the employees and make the information-seeking journey much easier. By having a good understanding of how people’s behavior motivates their information-seeking needs we can tailor the journey to suit each person’s needs.
Many of the courses I have taken while at SJSU have explored the different ways in which our behavior can affect our desire to seek out new information. In particular my INFO 200: Information Communities course looked specifically at how these different information-seeking behaviors can affect how people are driven to get their information. In this course we were tasked with picking out our own information community and study the different ways in which they gather their information.
The information community that I was most interested in studying was the fandom community. Because fandom is such a vast community I broke it up into three specific sections: fan fiction, fan art, and cosplay. In this research paper I define these three different subcultures of the fandom community and discuss how the members of each subculture communicate, collaborate, and share thoughts, opinions, and ideas within their communities. In addition to exploring how members of these subcultures communicate with one another I also explored how other factors could make a difference in how these individuals access their information.
After a brief introduction of the fandom community and the subcultures I have highlighted for discussion I begin reviewing the literature I was able to find about fandom. For the most part there are not a lot of academic resources that study the fandom community and its various subcultures. In particular it seems that many of the scholarly articles about fandom and its subcultures are focused on how fans seek out information within their communities and the professional articles focused more on why people in the fandom community meet-up to discuss their interests.
This paper discusses the methods I used to gather my information and what sources I garnered my information from such as scholarly articles, professional writing, and interviews with a few personal friends that are members of these different subcultures. After detailing the different methods I used to compile information for my paper I discussed the information by breaking down the information into the three different subcultures of fan fiction, fan art, and cosplay. In each of these sections I discuss the different ways in which members of these subcultures gather information and what drives this information collection.
In all three subcultures I found that most fans seek out more information because they are totally bought-in to the different universes or characters in which the media they are consuming is taking place. They are curious to know more about the world in which their characters live or want more information about the backstory of certain characters they find interesting. Once they learn enough about their characters or their worlds they might want to explore some of their own ideas that might involved writing stories about new adventures or character pairings, or perhaps they might be inspired to create some art of their favorite scenes or characters. In some cases, they might even want to create costumes and props so they can play as their favorite characters as in the cosplay subculture.
All three of these subcultures have varying degrees of knowledge needed to get started and fans will want to seek out other fans to get helpful tips or tricks or to consume content that others have created and posted online for free access for all. In the fan fiction subculture some fans might read stories written by other fans and leave different comments encouraging the writers to keep up their work or add more to their stories. It might also inspire other people to write their own versions of different stories or even rewrite scenes from the primary media to better fit what the fan thinks should have happened. In addition to this, fans might also want to talk with other fan artists to commission new art pieces or to get some assistance making their own art inspired by the primary media. In the cosplay subculture there are also a variety of different tutorials that fans have made for other fans that can teach them everything from making their first armor set or weapons props out of different materials or even how to sew their first fabric clothes.
The paper concludes with a wrap up of all the different ways in which the information-seeking behaviors of the members of these subcultures match up with what we had learned in class about information-seeking behavior. I also touch on the fact that there is still a fundamental lack of academic resources for fans to be able to use to find out more information about their various interests and how more studies should be done that explore how fandom and participatory cultures can positively impact students.
I chose this paper as evidence of Comp J because it specifically examines the different information-seeking behaviors of not just one specific information community, but of three different subcultures within that community. When gathering this information I tried to examine all the different ways in which people can run into obstacles when getting information. Before the Internet became mainstream it was very difficult for people within the fandom to communicate with one another and share their ideas. Especially if a fan was living in a more rural area it might be months before they were able to connect with someone else within the fandom to discuss their ideas or showcase the stories, art, or costumes they made.
Once the Internet became more mainstream in the ’90’s there was a veritable boom in the ways in which fans could communicate, share, and collaborate with other fans in between major conventions. Now with the advent of Web 2.0 and how the focus of much of our media is social (how users can become interactive with media on the internet instead of just passive consumers) it has given fans even more options to create new content and easily share it with other fans. This sharing of ideas allows for collaboration on different projects and ideas and the creation of new stories, art, and costumes.
Evidence
Bergeron_Fandom_Research_Paper_NO NAMES
Conclusion
By completing the research project I was able to study something that I personally find to be incredibly interesting and better understand how people within the fandom community seek out information and communicate with one another. By breaking down the fandom community into three different subcultures I was able to do more specific research on each of these three subcultures and get a better understanding of how information-seeking behaviors might vary from subculture to subculture. As I stated earlier, understanding these information-seeking behaviors is not a skill reserved exclusively for information professionals but can be a skill that is leveraged in a variety of industries. In fast-paced industries like computer science and information technology employees are often faced with the problem of change happening suddenly and needing to quickly adapt to whatever those changes are with minimal loss of efficiency.
In a highly stressful situation like this employees are in a position where they must learn a lot of information in a very short period of time and they are still expected to keep all other systems functioning without any kind of slow down. Understanding the ways in which these computer professionals will seek out information and digest it, the leadership team within the company can develop training to allow employees to stay up to date with the most recent changes and mitigate the potential downtime the company might experience had the leadership team not devised a way of making the process of finding and learning this new system easier.
Information professionals that understand how different groups of people are driven to seek out new information can offer timely assistance and take a potentially stressful searching experience for the client and make it much easier. In addition to making the information-seeking process easier for their patrons, information professionals can also offer other solutions that might assist people in their information-seeking process such as online forums, websites with video tutorials like YouTube, and even some social media that might have more information relevant to the searcher’s query.
Adventures in Library Science 