Friday, April 19, 2013

Prerequisites and needs of information


Information need refers to an individual or group’s desire to locate and obtain information
to satisfy a conscious or unconscious need. The ‘information’ and ‘need’ in ‘information need’ are
inseparably connected. Needs and interests are satisfied with information. Information needs and
information requirements are related to each other but are different. For example, information need
is like hunger and information requirement is food.
Information needs depend on the following factors:
a. Work activity
b. Discipline/Field/Area of Interest
c. Availability of facilities
d. Hierarchical position of individuals
e. Motivation factors for information needs
f. Need to take a decision
g. Need to seek new ideas
h. Need to validate the correct ones
i. Need to make professional contributions
j. Need to establish priority for discovery etc

A step by step procedure which can be adopted to study the information needs of a majority of
users is given below.
1. Study of subjects of interest to organization/users
2. Study of the organization and its environment
3. Study of the immediate environment of the users
4. Study of the users
5. Formal interview
6. Identification and recording of information needs
7. Analysis and refinement of the identified information needs.

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