Thesis defence at Cork
Jury with Prof. Frédéric Adam for a thesis at University College at Cork, defended by Carolanne Mahony. Her thesis extends one of her research papers presented in 2013 at ECIS. The paper was entitled “A Tool For Analysing e Information Behaviour Of Expectant And New Mothers”.
“This paper presents a tool that analyses the information behaviour of expectant and new mothers. The Information Behaviour Analysis Tool (IBAT) is based on a theoretical model of information behaviour that is adapted from extant literature. We use interview and activity diary data from the first stage of a longitudinal exploratory study to create and demonstrate the tool. The IBAT can be used to map the information behaviour of new and expectant mothers from beginning to end. Three different search episodes are used to demonstrate the efficacy of the tool and to highlight different types of search strategies. These examples demonstrate the variability of uncertainty as a factor during information behaviour and the interaction it can have when processing different information resources.
