Morris: Toward a User-Centered Information Service

Like Dewdney's librarians (p. 27, right column), I found the constructivist sense-making model "intuitively reasonable." Anyone who's staffed a phone- or email-based support service has eventually made a similar discovery: people think that they want simple facts, and are often quite certain about which facts they want, but when you take the time to understand their context and their real needs you end up going with them in a much more helpful direction.

I appreciated reading some specific suggestions on applying the model, and was especially taken with the idea of librarians going into the field (the lab in this case) to get involved in the information-seeking process earlier.

I was also struck in the early parts of this paper by the sense of fear and urgency that's been a subtext of several of our readings. Several times now, authors have suggested that the entire Librarian profession is at risk if it doesn't rethink itself in some fundamental ways.