LEEP student Lilach Manheim will present her paper, “Information non-seeking behavior,” at the Information Behaviour Conference (ISIC), an international biennial conference to be held this year in Leeds, United Kingdom, from September 2-5. Manheim has received funding from GSLIS to travel and attend the conference.
Manheim’s paper analyzes how the decision to not seek information has been studied and understood, with an examination of how the lens of information-seeking research has framed the way non-seeking behavior has been approached. Manheim argues that exploring information non-seeking behavior more holistically may lead scholars to discover that these behaviors could sometimes have beneficial uses, along with enabling a deeper understanding of information non-seeking in general. The premise originally came out of a project that Manheim created in Assistant Professor Nicole Cooke’s course, LIS 503: Use and Users of Information.
“I was thrilled to learn that my paper was chosen, especially since this is such a major conference for information behavior scholarship and is attended by many of the leaders in this field. Dr. Cooke’s support and guidance has been instrumental in completing this research and resulting paper, as well as in recommending that I submit my work to this conference,” said Manheim. “I also really appreciate the generous financial support provided by GSLIS through the conference travel grant for international travel. It demonstrates the school’s commitment to providing learning opportunities both inside and outside the classroom.”
Manheim is currently working in a long-term paid internship at the Salt River Project (SRP), a water and power utility company in Arizona. She started at the SRP corporate library, helping out on some instructional design development projects for the information management employee training program. She then joined the IT Strategy & Architecture department, where she has enjoyed the opportunity to work on a variety of projects, including information governance, IT governance methodology and tools development, training and documentation development, and intranet redesign projects. She also has served as the content manager for two high-visibility departmental SharePoint intranet sites. Manheim’s long-term career goals are focused primarily on user experience research and human-centered information design.
“The ISIC conference is an incredible opportunity to learn about the latest advances in information behavior research, and to meet practitioners who conduct research outside of the academic setting,” Manheim says.
Manheim’s paper will be published in the international online journal, Information Research.