Channelling chatman: Questioning the applicability of a research legacy to today's small world realities
Gary Burnett, Karen Fisher, Crystal Fulton, Julia A. Hersberger · Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology · 2006
Elfreda A. Chatman stands as a research pioneer whose work critically shaped our field.Internationally renowned, she brought fresh attention to the needs of ordinary people -marginalized populations in particular -in everyday settings.Moreover, she introduced the field to the merits and challenges of using ethnographic approaches.Over her career, she published several seminal worlds, including the monogragh, The Information World of Retired Women (1992), which won the 1995 ACRL Best Book Award.Her keynote address at the 2000 Information Seeking in Context (ISIC) conference in Goteborg, Sweden is considered one of the field's most significant publications.In recognition of her outstanding contributions, in 2005 ASIS& SIGUSE introduced the Elfreda A. Chatman Research Proposal Award.Chatman's research with varied groups, including the poor, older adults, female inmates in maximum security prisons, and janitors was instrumental in her development of several middle-range theories, including Information Poverty, Life in Round, and Normative Behavior.Moreover, with her background in sociology, she introduced the concept of "small worlds" -the backbone of her unique approach to studying information behavior.She inspired and challenged new generations of researchers to explore the varying information realities, both digital and non-digital, inherent in the small worlds of different groups.Since her premature death in 2002, Chatman's legacy continues to frame the research agenda and set the standards of information behavior scholars.This panel provocatively addresses Chatman's contributions by examining how her work affected study of four novel populations on both empirical and theoretical levels.In particular, the panel will question the usefulness of Chatman's frameworks and whether her efforts at theory building should be continued through new research.