Knowledge Representation and Information Seeking

Knowledge is a socially constructed reality based on facts, values and beliefs, with close associations with what we regard as true and valid and what appears to cause and explain what. Individual or collective, expert or novice, people know that and what they know through handling and analysing information. Information searches (informal, as conversations, formal, like reference enquiries) reveal and depend on frames of knowledge in participants. It is important for information intermediaries to recognise the cognitive style of the enquirer.