Leisure Studies Commons^™

An Interdisciplinary Platform For Information Behaviour Research In The Liberal Arts Hobby, Jenna Hartel

Jenna Hartel

Purpose – The liberal arts hobby is a leisure pursuit that entails the systematic and fervent pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the liberal arts hobby as a setting for information behavior research.

Design/methodology/approach – The method of interdisciplinary translation work is used to relate existing research from the specialties of leisure studies, adult education, and information behavior. Drawing from leisure studies, the liberal arts hobby is presented within the context of the serious leisure perspective, a theoretical framework of leisure.

Findings – The basic informational features of the liberal arts …

State Of Play: Information Phenomena In A Leisure Context, Jenna Hartel, Ian Ruthven, Max Wilson, Christopher Young

Jenna Hartel

This panel presents current information behaviour research in the context of leisure. It continues a tradition of locating work within the theoretical framework of leisure, the Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP). Five years has passed since the last public discussion of this topic at an ASIS&T Annual Meeting and in the intervening time much progress has been made in understanding leisure information phenomena. Our goals are to stimulate interest in leisure as a setting for information behaviour scholarship; provide a status report on the topic; and introduce new ideas associated with digital gaming, fun, and happiness. The panel includes four concise …

Taking Leisure Seriously: Information Realities In Leisure Time, Jenna Hartel, Donald Case, Crystal Fulton, Shan Ju Chang

Jenna Hartel

This panel presents the information realities that exist within leisure time. It introduces a conceptual model of leisure, called serious leisure (Stebbins, 1982), that affirms the role of information in enabling leisure experience. Our panel offers a theoretical perspective and case studies of a meaningful area of everyday life that has not been a subject of much information research. The specific goals are threefold:

1.) To present state of the art theorizing and research underway into the information seeking and use that occurs in the everyday life realm of leisure

2.) To introduce serious leisure, a concept that serves as …

The Serious Leisure Frontier In Library And Informtion Science: Hobby Domains, Jenna Hartel

Jenna Hartel

Research on information behavior rarely focuses on leisure realms while favoring scholarly and professional contexts as subjects. Such is the case despite compelling evidence of the desirability and profundity of leisure in human life. This article introduces one popular form of leisure, hobbies, a potentially provocative topic for ISB scholarship. To facilitate research on information within hobbies, the article discusses two conceptual devices. Serious leisure (Stebbins, 1982) describes essential characteristics of leisure, establishes that some types are information-rich, and provides a framework to study leisure systematically. The collectivist theory of domain analysis (Hjørland and Albrechtsen, 1995) orients research to the …