Short description:

The buzzwords "Information Society" and "Age of Access" suggest that information is now universally accessible without any form of hindrance. Indeed, the German constitution calls for all citizens to have open access to information. Yet in reality, there are multifarious hurdles to information access - whether physical, economic, intellectual, linguistic, political, or technical. Thus, while new methods and practices for making information accessible arise on a daily basis, we are nevertheless confronted by limitations to information access in various domains. This new book series assembles academics and professionals in various fields in order to illuminate the various dimensions of information's inaccessability. While the series discusses principles and techniques for transcending the hurdles to information access, it also addresses necessary boundaries to accessability.

Long description:

Das Verhältnis von Mensch und Information steht im Mittelpunkt vieler Wissenschaftsdisziplinen. Die Informationswissenschaften haben immer schon und in den letzten Jahrzehnten besonders intensiv untersucht, wie Menschen sich zu Informationen verhalten, sie suchen, finden und nutzen. Dennoch bleibt für diese Disziplin wie auch für Anthropologie, Erkenntnistheorie, Kognitionsforschung, Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Soziologie menschliches Informationsverhalten eine immer noch nicht gelöste Grundfrage. Dieser Band stellt erstmals für den deutschen Raum den aktuellen Kenntnisstand aus den unterschiedlichsten Perspektiven umfassend vor. "Informationsverhalten" erweist sich nicht nur als "Grundfrage der Informationsgesellschaft", sondern als zentrale Bedingung von Menschsein und Gesellschaft.

The relationship between people and information is central to many academic disciplines. The information sciences have always, and in recent decades particularly intensively, investigated how people relate to information and how they search for, find and use it. Nevertheless, for this discipline as well as for anthropology, epistemology, cognitive research, economics and sociology, human information behavior remains a fundamental question that has still not been resolved. This volume is the first to comprehensively present the current state of knowledge from a wide variety of perspectives. ?Information behavior? proves to be not only a "fundamental question of the information society", but also a central condition of human existence and society.