University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Building information worlds through community and experience: Preliminary findings of an ethnographic study of vehicle residents’ information practices

Montague, Kaitlin E.

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130775

Description

Title
Building information worlds through community and experience: Preliminary findings of an ethnographic study of vehicle residents’ information practices
Author(s)
Montague, Kaitlin E.
Issue Date
2024-10-16
Keyword(s)
  • information practice
  • information worlds
  • information seeking
  • vehicle residents
  • trust
  • Information needs
  • Specific populations
  • Sociology of information
  • Public libraries
Abstract
Across the United States, an estimated one million people inhabit vehicles as their primary method of housing. While vehicles are among the most common shelters aside from brick-and-mortar homes, few studies have explored this populace. This is among the first studies that investigate vehicle residents from an information perspective. Based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork, this study seeks to explore vehicle residents’ information practices and the resources and source preferences used to support their daily lives. The end goal is to understand how information institutions, namely public libraries, can create service provisions to offer support. Through an information worlds lens, coupled with information horizon interviews, this research seeks to examine how trust is built within this community through information seeking via other vehicle residents. Preliminary findings suggest that the trust constructed within this information world directly impacts vehicle residents’ decisions to turn to their community for information.
Publisher
Association for Library and Information Science Education
Series/Report Name or Number
Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference, 2024
Type of Resource
text
Genre of Resource
  • Conference Paper
  • Presentation
Language
eng
Handle URL
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130775
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2024.1707
Copyright and License Information
  • Copyright 2024 Kaitlin E. Montague
  • This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

Owning Collections

Proceedings of the ALISE Annual Conference: ALISE 2024 PRIMARY
The Ethics and Evolution of Truth and Information