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For “Global”, read “USA”. Examines the relationship between dominant communication technologies, human cognition and human organization. Concludes that electronic networks have a great potential for improving the richness of human cognition and facilitating democracy. Cautions that public money needs to be spent to ensure universal access to, development of and open exchange within networks. Avers that European critical scholarship is incapable of empirical verification.

Characterizations of users’ experiences on the Web are beginning to appear. Recently released research suggests that Internet use may reduce psychological well‐being, for instance by increasing loneliness and depression. Our current study implies that using the Internet may provoke enjoyable experiences through the flow state, which may in turn positively influence an individual’s subjective well‐being and improve a person’s happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect. By surveying 304 Web users through an open‐ended questionnaire, this study captures a picture of Web users’ flow experiences regarding their optimal situations on the Web. Results suggest that using the World Wide Web is an activity that facilitates flow, which generates an optimal, extremely enjoyable experience with total involvement and concentration. Symptoms and dimensions of flow states on the Web are reported directly from subjects’ responses, such as merging of action and awareness, a loss of self‐consciousness, the sense of time distortion, enjoyment, and telepresence.

Looks at the pathfinder approach to library instruction, which was developed in the 1960s by Patricia Knapp. Knapp's system focused, not on the simple provision of answers to questions, but on the teaching of the effective use of the library and its resources– in other words, on the finding of one's “way” in the library.

A traditional theoretical model for the creation and evaluation of pathfinders (subject research guides) can be identified through study of the literature. This model, expressed in the design criteria of consistency, selectivity, transparency and accessibility, sprang from an impulse to serve the inexperienced user by emulating or facilitating the user's search process.

A gap in this model can be detected, in the form of a missing multi‐dimensional picture of the user and the user's experience of the information service via the pathfinder. In an attempt to fill the gap, literature examining information behavior, the search process, the design of user‐centered services, and the information retrieval interaction is discussed.

An experience‐centered model for online research guide design and evaluation is derived from the findings.

According to Sasha Alyson, collections development librarians have a responsibility to provide books that address the needs of the estimated 10 percent of the population who are homosexual. Several authors have discussed the important role that libraries can play in the lives of gays and lesbians (see for example, Alyson, 1984; Ashby, 1987; Parkinson, 1987; and Monroe, 1989). Because they afford a degree of privacy to users, libraries that house good collections are a desirable place for gays and lesbians to sift through their positive and negative images and, in so doing, find solace and hope.

A discussion of the nature of information is undertaken by bringing together the views of Brenda Dervin and Karl Popper on subjectivity and objectivity as these relate to information use. It is shown that while they take different routes, they come to similar positions. From the historical development of information science, some work on the problem of information management is selected to show the relevance of the philosophical discussion to the practice. The overall purpose is to establish information as an existent with which librarians and information scientists work in a peculiar way, resulting in the acts of classification and indexing as applied in information retrieval systems (or libraries). The nature of information and its relationship to human activities is seen to be fundamental to the practice and principles of the profession as well as the science. I use the word ‘librarian’ to indicate the intermediary since the word ‘intermediary’ can carry the meaning ‘human and/or non‐human’. Here we are concerned with human problems.

Available evidence indicates that there is a growing gap between the information rich and information poor. That gap is part of a larger struggle for control of information resources and for the societal power that accompanies such control. New institutional arrangements are needed to spread the benefits of modern information technologies to all segments of the population. Achieving social equity objectives requires governmental leadership and funding. But current legislative proposals for shaping the National Information Infrastructure (NII) lack clear statements as to how the social equity objectives enunciated by the President and Vice President would be accomplished. These proposals seem to make insufficient provision for expanding the development of more than 150 computerized community information systems (CCIS) created by grass‐roots organizations over the past several years. Locally controlled information delivery systems supported by a federally sponsored system of National and Regional Institutes for Information Democracy could help meet the daily information needs of all people, regardless of economic class or community environment. The Institutes would provide sustained support for anc coordination of social equity and empowerment objectives, and could servie as the institutional structures lacking in current legislation

Purpose – Drawing on a study of data extracts ‘mined’ from the Internet without interaction with the author, this chapter considers the emotional implications of online ‘participant absent research’. The chapter argues that researchers should reflexively consider the ways in which data collection techniques framed as ‘passive’ actively impact on researchers’ emotional lifeworlds. Consequently, it is important to ensure that researchers are adequately prepared and supported.

Methodology/Approach – The data introduced in this chapter were constructed around a single case study. This example documents an incident where a woman was asked to leave a sports shop in the UK because she was breastfeeding. Not allowing breastfeeding within a business is illegal in the UK, and this case resulted in a protest. The study involved an analysis of user-generated data from an online news site and Twitter.

Findings – Drawing on field notes and conversations with colleagues, the chapter explores the value of reflexivity for successfully managing researchers’ emotional responses to disturbing data during the process of analysis.

Originality/Value – Whilst the role of emotion is often considered as part of ethnographic practice in studies utilising face-to-face encounters, it is underexplored in the online domain. This chapter presents, through a detailed example, a reflective account of the emotion work required in participant absent research, and offers strategies to reflexively manage emotions.

Purpose – To develop a broader understanding of sense-making as an embodied process of social construction.

Methodology/approach – Extended conversational interviews (Seidman, 1991) were undertaken with 35 prominent theatre professionals in Canada, Finland and the United Kingdom exploring the events and relationships that shaped their relationship with Shakespeare and his work. Inductive analysis was carried out inspired by a variety of theoretical lenses, including Dervin's Sense-Making and Foucauldian discourse analysis.

Findings – Participants’ sense-making was quintessentially social in that it was not only linked to their social connections and relationships with other members of the company but also a process of social construction drawing on a variety of disparate, and sometimes contradictory, established discourses. In contrast to prevailing approaches in information behaviour, the findings emphasise the importance of understanding sense-making in a more holistic way: as a process involving emotions as well as rationality, bodies as well as minds.

Research implications – Information researchers need to adopt a more holistic approach to understanding the relationship between people and information: to recognise that atomistic approaches focussing on the purposive information seeking of individuals reflect an implicit systems-centrism rather than people's lived experience.

Practical implications – Information researchers and practitioners need to consider the social affective and embodied nature of sense-making and consider, for example the ways in which online social networking sites build on centuries-old communal knowledge-sharing practices.

Originality/value of paper – The study extends our understanding of the importance of affect and embodiment for people's sense-making, while at the same time demonstrating that they, like language, are the products of social construction, both the object and generator of discourse.