From PBWorks: Since the early 1980s, Dr. David Ellis has been an active and influential scholar in the field of Information Studies. (Wilson, 1996, p. 6) He has been particularly influential in the area of the behavioral approach to studying information seeking behavior.(Meho & Tibbo, 2002, para. 1-6)
Dr. Ellis received his BA from Durham University in the UK and received his MA and PhD in Information Studies from the University of Sheffield. He stayed at the University of Sheffield, working as a lecturer and later as a senior lecturer, from 1984 until 2000. In 2000, he left Sheffield to take up a Professorship in the Information and Library Studies department at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He remains active in that program and internationally. He serves on the Editorial Boards of three journals (the New Review of Document and Text Management, the International Journal of Information Management, and Aslib Proceedings) and two international conference committees. (Prof. David Ellis, n.d.)
His most influential article to date was published early in his career, in 1989. “A Behavioural Approach to Information Retrieval System Design,” in the Journal of Documentation, is the summary of an empirical study Ellis carried out in which he interviewed several dozen faculty and research-oriented staff members in various divisions of the Psychology department at the University of Sheffield about their information seeking practices. (Ellis, 1989, pp. 171-175) He summarized these practices into six categories: Starting, Chaining, Browsing, Differentiating, Monitoring and Extracting. (Ellis, 1989, p. 178) Starting refers to an initial search, chaining to following up on works cited in bibliographies, browsing is “semi-directed searching,” differentiating refers to the practice of giving different weights to different sources, monitoring is keeping up with the literature in one’s field, and extracting is sitting down and actually reading the works found in the previous five steps. He then suggested how searchable online databases, then in their infancy, might be best designed so as to accommodate these practices of the professionals using them. (Ellis, 1989, pp.179-202) According to Social Sciences Citation Index, this paper has been cited 129 times since then.
Several others, notably Meho and Tibbo (2002), have updated and expanded upon Ellis’s work. Meho and Tibbo add Accessing, Networking, Verifying, and Information Management, but are careful to explain that the study they performed “confirmed Ellis’s model.” (Meho & Tibbo, 2002, Abstract) His continuing publications are difficult to count accurately because of the numerous other scholars in a variety of fields that share his name. His Staff Information page at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, however, lists eight between 2000 and 2003. (Prof. David Ellis, n.d.) He is at the top of his career, and his most prominent achievements may yet lie ahead, but he is already guaranteed a place of honor in the history of information studies.
References
Ellis, D. (1989). A behavioural approach to information retrieval system design. Journal of Documentation, 45(3), 171-212.
Institute for Scientific Information (2006) Social Sciences Citation Index. Philadelphia: Institute for Scientific Information [electronic database] (Citation adapted from Meho & Tibbo, 2002)
Meho, L. I., & Tibbo, H. R. (2002) Modeling the information-seeking behavior of social scientists: Ellis’s study revisited [electronic version]. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 45(6), 570-587
Prof. David Ellis (n.d.) Retrieved November 13, 2006 from the University of Wales,Aberystwyth, Department of Information and Library Studies web page: http://www.dis.aber.ac.uk/en/staff_info.asp?id=dpe
Wilson, T., ed. (1996) University of Sheffield Department of Information Studies Annual
Report 1996, p. 6. Retrieved November 13, 2006 from the University of Sheffield Department of Information Studies web site: http://www.shef.ac.uk/content/1/c6/05/26/44/Rep1996.pdf
