A Final Word

Tour Information

We didn't have a lot of suggestions for changing our tour, except for Teri's question about time and timing. Alex and I decided to address this issue in our discussion. Time and timing certainly could fit in with Dunne's phases of information needs of battered women - depending on the situation. The information seeking behavior of battered women is more situational than anything else. I brought this up in the presentation, but I will reiterate my point here. For example, one woman may want to plan her escape and recovery from abuse in the beginning and may want to be in a state of information overload. On the other hand, a different woman may not be ready to learn about finding her own apartment and may just want to get out of the abusive relationship for now. Depending on the person and the situation, women may/may not be ready for information at various times/phases in the information seeking process.

My Final Thoughts on Class

This semester I've been introduced to some unique user perspectives that I've never thought of before. Taking an entire semester to study the information needs of the less popular information poor was quite valuable. In most of the other classes, we focus on the information needs of the majority; and the majority is quite overstudied. Unfortunately, those with unique needs are in the minority and information professionals may inadverdently ignore their needs. This class has taught me to think about the needs of every user. If we never sit down and try to meet the needs of those who don't use our systems, they never will and our users will stay the same; because of this, our systems and our technologies will not grow. This is something that most be avoided; innovation is critical and to be innovative in the information seeking field we must design systems around each individual user. We should step out of our comfort zones!