Article Review I | 810XS | 170312 | Whitmer, Brian
Beyond treating the article as article in the context of the assignment, depending on the level of domain knowledge held by the reviewer, one could argue that the literature review lacks depth because it fails to situate the authors’ conceptual category of convenience into the pre-existing theoretical framework of The Principle of Lease Effort (Rubin, 2016, p. 378) which goes back to at least 1894 in the writings of Guillaume Ferrero. The authors may be “guilty” of violating principles of parsimony by creating a categorical construct that has already been defined in the literature under a different name. Not being well-enough versed in the relevant literature I can’t make that determination, but I felt it should be highlighted as a caveat to completing the assignment.
Article Review 1
I have selected the article “If it is too inconvenient I’m not going after it:” Convenience as a critical factor in information-seeking behaviors for the two-part article review assignment. Note: for purposes of this review, I will include section 3. Theoretical framework for convenience, as part of the literature review section of this essay.
Title
The first part of the title is a “quote” from an imagined person and serves to frame the problem – resources will not be used if they are perceived as being inconvenient. By not defining a specific population in the title, one could draw the inference that the article will offer a general approach. The subtitle reinforces the main title and pinpoints convenience as the primary variable that will be looked at and situates convenience in the context of information-seeking behavior. The title is concise and appropriate in the context of the journal it was published in - which is clearly situated in the domain of library and information science. But it could be made more effective for other researchers by specifying the scope is constrained mainly to library settings.
Abstract
The abstract describes the purpose of the study as an exploration of convenience as a “situational criterion in people’s choices and actions during all stages of the information-seeking process” (Connaway, Dickey, & Radford, 2011, p. 179) and highlights the methodology of the study by noting that “data from two multi-year, user study projects” would be explored using convenience as a “critical factor” (p. 179). Four theoretical frameworks are invoked and used to offer a conceptual definition of convenience. From the two projects studied, the scope of convenience across demographic categories is highlighted along with its use application in more narrowly defined information-seeking contexts of academic and everyday-life settings – offering evidence that the concept as defined is a factor in decision-making. The abstract meets the standard for an effective and appropriate abstract - providing sufficient information for a researcher to make an informed determination of interest in reading the full article.
Introduction The authors’ use their introduction to bring forward the problem area they will address through a focused examination of the two user studies they selected: “How do aspects of convenience – including information source, ease of access and use, and time constraints-impact information seekers choices and strategies in today’s information climate?” (p. 179). They establish its importance by noting that “librarians are finding that they must compete with other, often more convenient, familiar, and easy-to-use information sources” (p.179) and will need to design/redesign the library experience considering this changed information climate. Because of the number of theories used to develop their operational definition of convenience, the authors defer discussion of these theories to a later subsection in which they are covered in sufficient detail. The introduction meets the standard for an effective and appropriate introduction.
Literature Review
The authors begin their literature review with a broad definition of convenience as provided by a dictionary & narrow and define that definition in terms of information-seeking behavior as they review the existing literature. They note that most information-seeking studies have “tended to only address convenience in passing” (p. 180) and “there is anecdotal evidence that people will sacrifice content for the convenience of accessing information sources. There has been little documented evidence to support this assumption, however” (p. 179). Eleven studies, ranging from 1999 to 2010, were reviewed. The authors highlighted each studies’ results with relevance to convenience covering topics such as web and library discovery system usage, attitudes towards the physical library, Wikipedia use in a research context, faculty attitudes toward library usage, and understanding of information literacy among undergraduates as examples (p. 180). In the section headed, Theoretical framework for convenience, the authors examine the four theoretical frameworks they selected to inform their conceptual definition of convenience. They cover Reijo Savolainen’s concept of time as a context in information seeking and his related work in everyday-life information seeking (ELIS), gratification theory, rational choice theory, and Herbert Simon’s concept of satisficing. The authors mention bounded rationality in their abstract but do not specifically highlight it when talking about Simon – who had proposed the concept originally. The literature review with the theoretical section is effective and appropriate – providing a critical review of current literature, noting areas of weak research coverage, not overstating the applicability of results, placing the study in the context of the current research, and noting how the current study is an advance from the existing literature.
Conclusions
This is a well-written and well-structured article which meets the academic standards for effective and appropriate information presented in the title, abstract, introduction and literature review.
References
Connaway, L. S., Dickey, T. J., & Radford, M. L. (2011). “If it’s too inconvenient I’m not going after it:” Convenience as a critical factor in information-seeking behaviors. Library & Information Science Research, 33, 179-190.
Rubin, R. E. (2016). Foundations of library and information science (4th ed.). Chicago, IL: Neal-Schuman.