Seeking Meaning

This 30th anniversary edition celebrates the lasting value and enduring legacy of Carol C. Kuhlthau’s influential Information Search Process framework.

The publication of Seeking Meaning in 1993 marked a watershed moment in how we think about information seeking. The Information Search Process (ISP) model it introduced helped generations of educators prepare students for the increasingly complex information environments they would encounter, and its central findings have only grown in importance during the last 30 years.

For the first time in this anniversary edition, Kuhlthau’s canonical research is supplemented with new essays by scholars influenced by her work, making it timely and required reading for students of library and information science and an invaluable resource for anyone providing library and information services. Heidi Julien and Chirag Shah each explore the lasting influence of Kuhlthau’s model and point toward new directions for future research, while Leslie Maniotes examines the connection between the ISP, the Guided Inquiry Design Framework, and the model’s impact on education

Seeking Meaning offers a detailed description of the ISP and a framework for a process approach to library and information services. The ISP has helped to illuminate the user's perspective on information seeking and has offered insights into pressing problems of seeking meaning in an overabundance of information.

This evergreen text explores the implementation of a process approach to library and information services in education, an investigation of these concepts in the workplace, and a treatment of systems and systems design.