I am interested in the idea of ‘understanding’, and how the information sciences can help promote understanding, rather than simply imparting information or increasing knowledge. I have a long-standing interest in information for creativity and innovation, which has a strong relation to browsing approaches to information seeking, including similarity and dissimilarity analysis. Individual differences in information behaviour, particularly those associated with personality factors, are, in my view, a worthwhile subject for study, as a complement to the more common studies within social groups.
Information and digital literacy is also a long-standing interest, where I mainly focus on the conceptual basis, in particular the more all-encompassing concept of information fluency. I am involved with an Erasmus+ project to develop a MOOC for multi-lingual and multi-cultural information literacy education.
The topics are included in my teaching on courses in information for specific subject domains, and in the foundations of library and information science, at CityLIS.
Examples of my publications in this area are:
D Bawden and L Robinson. Information Overload: An Overview. In Redlawsk, D.P. (ed.) Oxford Encyclopedia of Political Decision Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Available online in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics DOI:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1360.
S Nowrin, L Robinson and D Bawden, Multi-lingual and multi-cultural information literacy; perspectives, models and good practice, Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication, 2019, 68(3), 207-222
L Robinson and D. Bawden (2018), Identifying good practices in information literacy education: creating a multi-lingual, multi-cultural MOOC. In S. Kurbanoglu, J. Boustany, S, Spiranec, E. Grassian, D. Mizrachi and L. Roy (eds.), Information Literacy in the Workplace. ECIL 2017. Communications in Computer and Information Science, 810, Cham: Springer, pp. 715-727. Paper presented at the 5th European Conference on Information Literacy, St Malo, 20 September 2017.
D Bawden and L Robinson, “An intensity around information”: the changing face of chemical information literacy, Journal of Information Science, 2017, 43(1), 17-24
D Bawden and L Robinson, Information and the gaining of understanding, Journal of Information Science, 2016, 42(3), 294-299
P Vilar, A Šauperl,, Z Semlič Rajh, L Robinson and D Bawden, Information competencies of historians as archive users: A Slovenia/UK comparison. Paper presented at the European Conference on Information Literacy, Prague, 12 October 2016.
D Bawden, Being fluent and keeping looking, in Information literacy: lifelong learning and digital citizenship in the 21st century. Communications in Computer and Information Science no. 482. Kurbanoglu, S., Spiranec, S., Grassian, E., Mizrachi, D. and Catts R. (eds.) Berlin: Springer, 2014, pp. 13-18
D Bawden, Encountering on the road to Serendip? Browsing in new information environments, in A Foster and P Rafferty (eds.), Innovations in IR: Perspectives for theory and practice, London: Facet Publishing, 2011, pp 1-22
D Bawden and L Robinson, Individual differences in information-related behaviour: what do we know about information styles, in A Spink and J Heinström (eds), New Directions in Information behaviour, Bingley: Emerald, 2011, p282-300
D Bawden, Origins and concepts of digital literacy, in Digital literacies: concepts, policies and paradoxes, C Lankshear and M Knobel (eds.), New York: Peter Lang, 2008, pages 17-32.
D Bawden and L Robinson, The dark side of information: overload, anxiety and other paradoxes and pathologies, Journal of Information Science, 2009, 35(2), 180-191
D Bawden, Information and digital literacies; a review of concepts, Journal of Documentation, 2001, 57(2), 218-259
D Bawden, Information systems and the stimulation of creativity, Journal of Information Science, 1986, 12(5), 203-216
The Occasional Informationist 