THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DERVIN,BRENDA SENSE-M AKING APPROACH AND ITS APPLICATION TO USER STUDY

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.