The importance of theories of knowledge: Browsing as an example

The study on information science (IS) by Bates (2007) is an important contribution to the literature on browsing in IS. It is explicitly based on “behavioural science.” I use this article as the point of departure for demonstrating how more social and interpretative understandings may provide fruitful improvements for research in information seeking, browsing, and related phenomena. It is part of my ongoing publication of articles about philosophical issues in IS and it is intended to be accompanied by analyses of other examples of contributions to core issues in IS. Although it is mainly formulated as a discussion based on a specific paper, it should be seen as part of a general discussion of the philosophical foundation of IS and as support for the emerging social paradigm in this field. The article argues that human browsing should not be conceptualized primarily in biological terms and should not be understood as random exploratory processes, but rather it should be seen as a kind of orienting strategy governed by people's metatheories or “paradigms.” Information professionals should know how different metatheories are distributed in the information ecology and, thus, be able to help people developing fruitful browsing strategies.