The Information World of Retired Women

(Hardback)

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Using the profiles of women living in a retirement community, the author explores the information and social worlds of aging women. The focus of the study is the effects of aging on help-seeking behaviours. The author examines ways in which older women search for information; she found several areas of need, including failing health, financial concerns, and loneliness. For many of the women, death was not a problematic area. The author also discovered that the most critical areas of need were not shared with others. In fact, the residents chose to conceal the most dire needs for assistance. Surprisingly, the retirement community played a major role in this process. The relationships between help-seeking behaviours and information policy is discussed. The role that information professionals can play in bringing information to populations, such as the one examined here, adds insight to the studies of information use and user needs.

Reviews

The articulated caring with which Chatman approaches her task and the compassion of her execution stand out as a model for all research approaches that intend to report on worlds as seen by others.-Library Quarterly
The book is worth recommending to those interested in aging and older women. Undergraduate; graduate.-Choice
The study has many strengths: It is well written and clear. The work as a whole makes a strong case for the use of ethnographic research in library and information science and is original, ground-breaking research in an area that is of increasing importance in planning, developing, and evaluating information services.-Library and Information Science Research
"The articulated caring with which Chatman approaches her task and the compassion of her execution stand out as a model for all research approaches that intend to report on worlds as seen by others."-Library Quarterly
"The book is worth recommending to those interested in aging and older women. Undergraduate; graduate."-Choice
"The study has many strengths: It is well written and clear. The work as a whole makes a strong case for the use of ethnographic research in library and information science and is original, ground-breaking research in an area that is of increasing importance in planning, developing, and evaluating information services."-Library and Information Science Research

Author Bio

ELFREDA A. CHATMAN is Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has contributed articles to several library-related journals, including Library and Information Science Research, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, and RQ.