Editorial
This issue
We have another manageable issue this quarter, with five papers and six book reviews, and we also have the first instalment of seventeen papers from the ISIC Conference, which was held in Krakow, Poland, in October. As usual, the papers cover a wide variety of topics, although, quite by chance the papers by Margaret Zimmerman (Information horizons mapping to assess the health literacy of refugee and immigrant women in the USA) and Hanseul Lee (A comparative study on the health information needs, seeking and source preferences among mothers of young healthy children: American mothers compared to recent immigrant Korean mothers) deal with immigrants, and both use, as part of the data collection process, Sonnenwald's idea of the 'information horizon'. The information horizon is an adaptation of a technique developed in sociology, known as a sociogram, and it is a little surprising that the sociogram, in its original form, of mapping relationships among people, has not been used to a greater extent in information behaviour research, given that the most common way of seeking information is to ask other people.
Sarah Bukhar and her colleagues also deal with information seeking behaviour, in a study of international students in Malaysia, with a focus on the use of social media. Not surprisingly, the most used media are Facebook and WhatsApp, with only Chinese students ignoring these and using the Chinese services, QQ and WeChat.
Rafael de Oliveira and Renata Baracho also focus on social media, but in their case it is in using data mined from TripAdvisor to develop a set of indicators for assessing tourists' satisfaction with sites and services as a aid to planning tourism policy in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. The use of these indicators over time enables policy makers to assess the success, or otherwise, of their policies.
Finally Rimvydas Skyrius and colleagues discuss The emerging role of business intelligence culture. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, but usefully, they find that the exchange of information and the building of an intelligence community within corporations are essential for an intelligence culture, supported, of course, by senior management. When that support is lacking, the culture is unlikely to emerge.
I mentioned in the last issue that we are always interested in expanding the number of reviewers available to the journal. No one responded to that, so I'll repeat it: if you have the PhD and some years of experience in research, teaching or practice, and would be interesed in reviewing, let me know by mailing wilsontd@gmail.com. I don't need a full CV, just basic information on your qualifications and area of expertise.
Book reviews
We have the usual collection of book reviews: from my point of view Charles Cole's The consciousness' drive is the outstanding book this quarter. We reviewed his Information need in 2012 and this book is a kind of 'prequel' to that book, dealing with the drivers of information need at a theoretical level. Of course, the other books reviewed also have much to offer from very different points of view and perhaps Harley, Morgan, and Frith's book on cyberpsychology will find many readers.
Lastly
My thanks, as usual, to reviewers, copy-editors, Regional Editors, and to Anna Andersson, our new Editorial Assistant.
Professor Tom Wilson
Editor in Chief
December, 2018