Natalie SapkarovSeptember 11, 2006LIS 501 AL1/AD1LaBarre/Taylor

Information Needs of English Children

Although children are often aptly nicknamed “little scientists” or “baby

Einsteins” for their inquisitive nature and exploration of the vast world

around them, research about the information needs of children has been

scarce in the United States. In “Just What Do They Want? What Do They

Need? A Study of the Informational Needs of Children,” Andrew Kenneth

Shenton and Pat Dixon consider a British academy-funded Ph.D. research

study that was conducted in a small town of northeast England during the

1999-2000 school year. The study took place in six neighborhood schools—

two primary, two middle, and one high school. A total of 188 students,

representing a wide range of abilities, were randomly selected to participate

in this study, and, from those, 121 individual interviews were conducted. As

Shenton and Dixon delineate, “the typology was constructed by investigating

the ideas of children as expressed by them, and the understanding of need

that was developed was based on their perspectives (37).” In short,

researchers were curious to find what children themselves identified as their

own information wants and needs by asking them directly about the last time

that they felt they needed to learn something.

After interviewing these students, researchers sorted their results into

13 types of information needs as described by the sample children. These

information needs include: advice, response to problems, personal

information, affective support, empathetic understanding, support for skill

development, school-related subject information, interest-driven information,

consumer information, self-development information, preparatory

information, reinterpretations and supplementations of information, and

verificational information (37-39). For each category, these information

needs were not only described with specific examples but also correlated

with the type of student (primary, middle, high school) who responded with

this need. In most cases, the concerns of the primary students were different

than those of high school students while the middle school students were

found, quite appropriately, in the middle. For example, in relation to affective

support, primary and middle school students expressed the need for

information about new experiences while middle and high school students

were concerned about their self-images (38). Therefore, information needs

not only differ between adults and children but also within age groups of

children.

For Shenton and Dixon, these findings pose a starting point in

discovering the information needs of children, as these children are not a

true representation of all children worldwide but merely of their specific

demographic. This study, however, can be useful for American schools and

libraries as it illuminates the variety of children’s informational needs. Since

much of children’s time is spent in school, it goes accordingly that many of

their informational needs will stem from school assignments and activities, a

need that is unique to this group. In order to facilitate the information

retrieval process for children, libraries should use kid-friendly online catalogs

or offer bibliographical information for a topic that is known to be studied in

the schools at that time. In the school, librarians should also be teachers of

the library by explaining the organizational system, locating varied reference

materials, directing research, and being available to answer individual

questions. Most importantly, librarians and designers of information systems

must recognize that the information needs of children are rather different

than those of adults and are just as valid.

Works Cited

Shenton, Andrew Kenneth, and Pat Dixon. "Just What Do They Want? What

Do They

Need? A Study of the Informational Needs of Children." Children &

Libraries 1.2 (2003): 36-42.