M. Matsubayashi, THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DERVIN,BRENDA SENSE-M AKING APPROACH AND ITS APPLICATION TO USER STUDY, Library and Information Science, (34), 1995, pp. 1-15
In the area of information needs and user studies, the sense-making ap
proach proposed by Brenda Dervin is one of the influential theories wh
ich adopt user-centered viewpoints. 'Sense-making' theory is a set of
conceptual and theoretical premises and related methodologies for asse
ssing how people make sense of their worlds and how they use informati
on resources in the information seeking process. While examining the '
sense-making' approach, we tend to put emphasis just on three major el
ements, i.e., 'situation', 'gap' and 'use'. The significance of this a
pproach would rather be the frame of reference in which one understand
s the other person's information needs. In this paper, three studies b
y R. M. Harris, N. M. Betts, and T. L. Jacobson, which adopt the sense
-making approach as theoretical foundations, are examined in terms of
how each researcher him/herself recognizes the significance of this ap
proach. As a result, it is revealed that they tried to connect each of
three elements with human information needs and to give explanations
to human information seeking behavior. The goal of the sense-making ap
proach is partly to understand human information seeking behavior from
the holistic viewpoint, and partly to use the 'situation-gap-use' mod
el as a framework. This finding implies the future possibility of such
a holistic approach in in information use study as Devin's.