4) Dervin: From the mind’s eye of the user: The sense-making qualitative-quantitative methodology.

According to Dervin in "From the mind’s eye of the user: The sense-making qualitative-quantitative methodology," sense-making is "a set of assumptions and propositions" about the process through which people understand and apply meaning to their everyday experiences (Dervin 1992, pg 52). In terms of information need and retrieval, sense-making is based on a concept that we've seen in the other readings: when a person realizes there is a "discontinuity" (Dervin 1992, pg. 53) - a gap (or ASK, as Belkin calls it) in his/her knowledge bank, s/he will attempt to bridge it through learning, either though communication with another person or, in terms of library science, through the aid of an information retrieval system. It is important to note that Dervin's sense-making can be applied to any moment in an individual's life, not just when s/he is interacting with an IR system. To bring up Belkin again, I believe that Dervin would agree that an IR system should help the user, not solve the situation. Since the sense-making gaps are more open ended than a yes/no or fact-based information need, it might even be impossible for an IR system to bridge the gap.

Dervin's sense-making is a user-centered theoretical model. In fact, to Dervin there is no one more important than the individual user. Rather than relying on human patterns, sense-making structure is "energized by, maintained, riefied, changed, and created by individual acts of communication" (Dervin 1992, pg. 55/67). However, it is not just the individual's behavior, but the individual's behavior at a particularly moment in time that is the key to the sense-making theory (Delkin 1992, pg. 55/66). An individual can change tactics or strategy at any moment, to the point where s/he may be seen as "capricious" (Dervin 1992, pg. 55/66). While I find much of Dervin confusing and not entirely convincing, I agree with her on this point: humans are complex creatures who contradict each other and even themselves. When faced with a problem or gap, we will engage in a variety of methods to create a bridge to get ourselves to the other side. It is this adaptability which has allowed the species to survive and thrive. Again, this is so obvious, I'm not sure why a study had to be done on it.

Unlike Taylor, who argued in "Question negotiation and information seeking in libraries" that there was a process that an information need went through, Dervin's "circling the experience" triangular model has no clear steps: the situation, gap, and help/use all occur simultaneously (Dervin 1992, pg. 56/69). Taylor comes from the cognitive viewpoint school of thought, while Dervin is more interested in looking at the user information need from the viewpoint of that particular situation (and not the cognitive viewpoint of the user). However both would agree that librarians need to make good use of the reference interview, utilizing open-ended questions, to help their patron/user fulfill their information need.