| Description |
Diaries are a flexible research method. The researcher can use a completely unstructured diary depending only on what the participant shares with the researcher, to a strictly structured questionnaire. Diaries serve to self-record activities or thoughts in (more or less) real-time without the actual presence of the researcher. Among their advantages is reducing forgetting and shyness problems compared to questionnaires or interviews. Diaries have been employed in many fields, e.g. health care or media studies. This method was used in the development of models and theories in information behaviour, for example, the Information Search Process Model, although the author refers to the method as journals (Kuhlthau 1988, p. 234), or the Information-Seeking Model by Byström and Järvelin (1995). The flexibility of diaries is an advantage due to the possibility of adapting to specific research. Still, it is more difficult to find recommendations and guidelines for the application and to realise the consequences of a specific methodological setting. This contribution, therefore, aims to conduct an indepth literature review of using diaries in information behaviour research. The first phase is the quantitative analysis of publications available in Web of Science and Scopus databases, followed by qualitative analysis. We focus on (1) the topics (research areas and questions), (2) the setting of research tools in aspects defined by Sheble and Wildemugh (2009), (3) procedures of sampling, reminders, and data analysis, and (4) the advantages and disadvantages of the method. References: Kuhlthau, C. C. (1988). Developing a model of the library search process: cognitive and affective aspects. Rq, 28(2), 232-242. Byström, K., & Järvelin, K. (1995). Task complexity affects information seeking and use. Information Processing & Management, 31(2), 191-213. https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-4573(95)80035-R Sheble, B. M., & Wildemuth, B. M. (2009). Research Diaries. In B. M. Wildemuth, Applications of social research methods to questions in information and library science (pp. 211-221). Libraries Unlimited.
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