Choosing Your Information Community

For many students enrolled in this course, the concept of an Information Community is new. It requires a new mental vantage point to reframe one’s understanding of the communities we encounter every day. For some, identifying and choosing an information community for research might seem a tremendously daunting task, and for others it might seem obvious from the start.

It is important to critically evaluate the community you are considering for its efficacy as a focus for your coursework. The community you choose will form the basis for almost all of the assignments in this class, so you’ll want to make sure you pick one that interests you and that has a variety of information sources available for you to work from.

This assignment helper is a step-by-step guide for helping you select the information community you would like to research this semester. Below you will find a list of communities students have successfully researched in the past, as well as numerous tips on how to choose a community. You may be inspired to select a community that has previously been researched, but also know that it is okay to select a community that you find to be interesting and researchable that is not listed below. 

INFO 200 Assignment Progression

Tips for choosing your community:

  • Select a community that interests you, but avoid choosing an information community in which you play an integral role. This could potentially lead to discussions on common interest rather than research on the information needs and information-seeking behaviors of the community. Researching and synthesizing the information needs and information-seeking behaviors of your chosen community requires focus and a balance in objectivity of and affinity for the information community you select.
  • Being interested and intrigued by the information community you select will drive your research and fuel your motivation throughout the semester. However, sometimes deep involvement in the chosen community leads to more enthusiast-based discourse rather than objective, academic research related to the community’s information needs and information-seeking behaviors. This includes a myriad of communities, including health-related information communities, fan-based information communities, and other information communities.
  • If possible, select a community that might already be of interest to Information Professionals. If you research a community that has captured the curiosity of other information professionals, your research will yield results more readily than research of an especially obscure community. For example, there has been more academic and peer reviewed research conducted in relation to the Citizen Scientists community than that of the cryptozoologists. Because of this, resources and research relating to Citizen Scientists and their behaviors are more available than information relating to the cryptozoologist community. An obscure online community that was formed during the COVID-19 pandemic is the Seth Meyers’s “Corrections” community, which is a series of YouTube exclusive videos released weekly. 
  • Explore your topic in the Library & Information Science Source (LISS) database or Google Scholar to get a sense of whether any scholarly research has been done on your proposed information community. (For additional helpful resources see: Library and Information Science Guide: INFO 200).
  • Avoid choosing an information community that is too narrow or obscure to afford substantive data from the literature to be collected in your research, especially as it relates to information needs and information-seeking behaviors.
  • Be aware of the larger communities under which your information community falls so that you can broaden your research if necessary.

The following are example questions that you will likely ask and pursue in your research:

  • What are the information needs of your chosen community?
  • What are the information uses, behaviors, and preferences of your chosen community?
  • Where do community members look for information? And are they successful in finding information?
  • Where can community members find the information they need or want? Is it accessible to them?
  • What are the themes of information-seeking behavior within your focus information community?
  • How can the information professional better connect the information community to needed and desirable information?

Successful Information Communities:

The following are examples of communities INFO 200 students have researched successfully in the past. This list may inspire your thinking as you choose your community, but it does not have to. Previously researched information communities include:

Professional communities (doctors, lawyers, etc)

Vegetarians

Cancer survivors

Crafters

Hobbyist Cooks

Harry Potter Fans

Nerdfighters Online Community

Specialty Coffee Professionals

Tattoo Enthusiasts

Film Preservation Archivists

Fiction Writers

Hobby Genealogists

Triathletes

Military Families

Recreational Drone Users

US Immigrants

Elderly Caregivers

Book Authors

Individuals suffering from chronic illness

Feminist theory and music community

A town or geographic area’s Virtual Information Community

Pikes Peak Genealogical Society

ALA Think Tank

Somali Information Community

Homeless Persons

Hispanic community (in a specific location)

Historian information community

Film preservation  community

Blended Families

ufologists

eSports Community

Women’s health/fitness

Electronic Dance Music fans

Bay Area Riders Forum

Homesteading

Adults Managing Depression

Conspiracy Theorists

Parents with special needs children

Ham radio operators

Tweens

D&D fans

Board Game Fans

Video Gamers

Cosplay

Knitting Community

Reenactment Community

Prisoner information community

Parents with special needs children

Phish fans

Ham radio operators

Web Sleuths and “Murderinos”

Birding

Pregnancy

Gluten free

Running

Tiny Houses

Parents of Children with Disabilities

Next: Intro to Assignment Synthesis Examples