The Mythology of Information Overload

Library Trends, Wntr, 1999 by Tonyia J. Tidline

White (1994) believes library and information science and information system professionals are concerned with records--which he defines as "externally stored, content-bearing memories." He claims that information professionals "are irrevocably committed to understanding and improving this kind of external memory" (p. 252). White stipulates, however, that "[s]ocial memory--that is, other people regarded as stocks of knowledge, lore, and opinion--is of the utmost importance; it is the source to which most persons, including the very learned, turn most often when uncertainties arise, as countless studies in IS [information systems] and L & IS [library and information science] attest ... for most persons, sources of information other than people are not a main stock but a reserve stock to be used only when necessary (and often not then)" (p. 251).

White (1994) identifies information professionals as filters, but observes that a common strategy for avoiding "information overload" (which he does not define) is to avoid information professionals. This avoidance occurs: (1) because information professionals lack a social mandate to prescribe, and (2) because information professionals might be "neurologically different" from their potential customers (p. 280). From White's discussion it can be inferred that "potential customers" of the information professional choose to mediate their own exchange between internal and external memory, preferring to manage information overload on their own. This might be because people have more immediate access to context that makes sense of information.

The "sense-making" approach to information enhances understanding of the interplay between White's (1994) "main and reserve" stocks of information. Dervin (1983) has applied sense-making to look at how "the average citizen" constructs information needs and uses. Dervin states that "sense-making is defined as behavior, both internal (i.e. cognitive) and external (i.e. procedural) which allows the individual to construct and design his/her movement through time-space. Sense-making behavior, thus, is communicating behavior. Information seeking and use is central to sense-making (as it similarly is seen as central to all communicating)...". Dervin sees information not as something that exists independent of, and external to, human beings but as a product of human awareness. Observations are mediated by human minds that guide selection of what to observe, how to observe, and how to interpret products of observation. Consequently, "information producing" is internally guided, subjective, and constrained.

Like Toelken (1996), Dervin feels that individuals are bound by time and space, which constrains what they can observe at any given moment. People may be bound by the past, but present observations are influenced by personal histories and by visions of the future as well. Observations made today may not be applicable tomorrow. Dervin (1983) characterizes the sense-making approach to information-seeking and use as a constructing activity rather than simply a transmitting activity (p. 3). The sense-making approach thus not only takes into account information in context but also information need and use that occurs through time and space. Like Toelken and Buckland, Dervin recognizes that "information" circumstance and process, internal and external perception, and context of use that establishes meaning are indispensable to that which is called information. One final point should be added to the mix of ideas about how information functions. External memory embodied in other people, and the need for context, suggests that ease of accessibility is an additional component of information "processing."