Reports of the demise of the "user" have been greatly exaggerated: Dervin's sense-making and the methodological resuscitation of the user – looking backwards, looking forward

Abstract

In 2003, an ASIST panel (Rosenbaum, Davenport, Lieuvrouw, Day, 2003) pronounced the "death of the user" suggesting that new technologies undermine a concept that was already weak in ability to account for agency in information seeking and use. This panel challenges that pronouncement by addressing how methodological approaches have created users in different manifestations – emotional, cognitive, physical, and social – elusive and capricious, dead or almost so, overly demanding, disinterested, individualistic, materialistic, culture-bound, active, passive…. Panelists zero in on how they have used and struggled with Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology (Dervin & Foreman-Wernet, 2003) in attempts to conduct parsimonious, heuristic, and useful user studies and to introduce a strong user-orientation into LIS pedagogy and practice. Starting with the seminal Dervin & Nilan (1986) ARIST review of information seeking and use studies, Dervin's Sense-Making has been pointed to as sparking the turn toward user-oriented studies of information seeking and use (e.g., Savolainen, 1993). Sense-Making has been much quoted and misquoted, praised and criticized, implemented and co-opted. This panel will look backwards and forward using Sense-Making as an exemplar and foil for considering the ways philosophies that drive methodologies and methods that implement them enlarge or diminish our conceptions of the user.