Assessing Information Needs in the Age of the Digital Consumer

by David Nicholas, Eti Herman

Aiming at ensuring that everyone obtains the rich rewards available in today's information-centred society, this book seeks to provide a systematic method for the understanding, appreciation and evaluation of information needs, which alone can guarantee the value of information to the consumer. Based on the insights gained from research projects involving hundreds of thousands of people, it sets out to provide a framework, firmly grounded in theory but nevertheless highly practical, for information needs analysis. The book is written both for librarians, publishers, archivists, records managers, journalists and other information professionals, to help them in their efforts to design improved systems and monitor the effectiveness of their services on an ongoing basis, and for individual information consumers, to enable them better to meet their own information needs in the expanding sphere of virtual information.

184 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

David Nicholas received the Ph.D. in 1967 from Brown University under the supervision of Bryce Lyon. He taught at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln from 1967 until 1989, then moved to Clemson University, where he retired in 2006 as Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor Emeritus of History. After beginning his career as a historian of the Flemish cities in the fourteenth century, he has more recently studied broader patterns of comparative urbanization, law, and institutions and expanded his geographic focus to include late medieval Germany. He has received grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society. Professor Nicholas has written numerous book chapters and articles in such journals as The American Historical Review, The English Historical Review, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, Past and Present, and Annales. Économies. Sociétés. Civilisations.