Dr. Elfreda A. Chatman was well-known for her ethnographic approaches in researching information seeking

Information seeking

Information seeking is the process or activity of attempting to obtain information in both human and technological contexts. Information seeking is related to, but yet different from, information retrieval .- Information Retrieval :...

 behaviors among understudied or minority groups (poor people, the elderly, retired women, female inmates, and janitors).

Contributions

Dr. Chatman’s research contributions or developments resulted in several middle-range theories: Information Poverty, Life in Round, and Normative Behavior. Based on her background in sociology

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

, she introduced her “small worlds” method to studying information behavior.

Life in the Round

This theory draws on Chatman's study of female prisoners at a maximum-security prison in the northeastern United States. After observing inmates both during and outside of their interactions with the prison's professional employees, Chatman observes that the women live "in the round", that is, "within an acceptable degree of approximation and imprecision". Instead of seeking information about the outside world, over which they have no control, prisoners avoid gathering this type of information: in order to survive, they place importance on "daily living patterns, relationships, and issues that come within the prison environment" over which they can exercise agency. In this way, inmates display defensive information seeking behavior

Information seeking behavior

Information seeking behaviour refers to the way people search for and utilize information.In 2000, Wilson described information seeking behaviour as the totality of human behaviour in relation to sources and channels of information, including both active and passive information-seeking, and...

.

Inmates form a "small world," a closed community where private opinion gives way to a shared reality and accompanying information-seeking behavior. Social norms established by inmates determine the importance or triviality of a piece of information; as such, information that affects prisoners in an immediate way - such as illness while medical staff are off-duty - gain importance, while information on the outside world becomes trivial . Chatman concludes that life in the round disfavours information seeking behaviour, as there is no need to search for outside information. Prisoners "are not part of the world... being defined by outsiders"; because inmates do not need additional information to participate fully in their reality, they do not seek it out .

Background

Dr. Chatman received her B.S. from Youngstown State University

Youngstown State University

Youngstown State University, founded in 1908, is an urban research university located in Youngstown, Ohio, United States. As of fall 2010, there were 15,194 students and a student-faculty ratio of 19:1. It is recognized as being one of the premier schools in the country, comparable to Ivy League...

, her M.S.L.S. from Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University

Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...

, and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

. Her 1992 book, The Information World of Retired Women (Greenwood Press), won the ACRL Best Book Award in 1995. Dr. Chatman participated in the American Library Association

American Library Association

The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....

’s Library Research Round Table (LRRT) during the 1980s and 1990s, and served as LRRT Chair in 1993-1994. Dr. Chatman was a professor at the School of Information Studies at Florida State University

Florida State University

The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...

 before her death on January 15, 2002.

Works

• The diffusion of information among the working poor. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1984.
• “Field Research: Methodological Themes.” Library and Information Science Research, An International Journal 6, no. 4 (1984) 425–38.
• “Information, Mass Media Use, and the Working Poor.” Library and Information Science Research 7, no. 2 (1985) 97–113.
• “Diffusion Theory: A review and test of a conceptual model in information diffusion.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 37, no. 6 (1986) 377–386.
• “Opinion Leadership, Poverty, and Information Sharing.” Reference Quarterly 26, no. 3 (1987) 341–53.
• “The Information World of Low-Skilled Workers.” Library and Information Science Research 9, no. 4 (1987) 265–83.
• “Life in a Small World: Applicability of Gratification Theory to Information-Seeking Behavior.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 42, no. 6 (1991) 438–449. (DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199107)42:6<438::AID-ASI6>3.0.CO;2-B)
• “Alienation theory: Application of a conceptual framework to a study of information among janitors.” Reference Quarterly 29, no. 3 (1990) 355.
• “Channels to a Larger Social World: Older Women Staying in Contact with the Great Society.” Library and Information Science Research 13, no. 3 (1991) 281–300.
• The information world of retired women. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992.
• “The Role of Mentorship in Shaping Public Library Leaders.” Library Trends 40, no. 3 (1992) 492–512.
• with Pendleton, Victoria. “Knowledge Gap, Information-Seeking and the Poor.” Reference Librarian 49-50 (1995) 135–145.
• “The Impoverished Life-World of Outsiders,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47, no. 3 (1996) 193–206.
• with Pendleton, Victoria. “Small World Lives: Implications for the public library.” Library Trends. 46, no. 4 (1998) 732.
• “A Theory of Life in the Round.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 50, no. 3 (1999): 207–217.
• with Huotari, Maija-Leena. “Using everyday life information seeking to explain organizational behavior.” Library & Information Science Research 23, no. 4 (2001) 351–366.
• with Burnett, Gary and Michele Besant. “Small Worlds: Normative behavior in virtual communities and feminist bookselling.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 52, no. 7 (2001) 536–547.
• with Dawson, E. Murrell. “Reference group theory with implications for information studies: a theoretical essay.” Information Research: an international electronic journal 6, no. 3 (2001) 105.