Overcoming Information Poverty

Chapter 7

Investigating Information Poverty at the Meso Level

Part 1

Abstract

This chapter conceptualises information poverty from the meso (sociocultural) perspective to illustrate how the cultural norms and information behaviours that exist within communities can lead to information poverty. This conceptualisation is important to understand how groups interact with information, how they value learning and the social factors that may prevent some people from using libraries. Furthermore, the chapter demonstrates how the sociocultural approaches to information access and information poverty can be useful from an information profession perspective by understanding the communities libraries serve and improving services to them; in determining why some ...