Re-Thinking Our Concept of Users‪.‬

It is now more than twenty years since Dervin & Nilan (1) wrote their groundbreaking ARIST review, describing the emergence of a 'user-centred paradigm, in what was then known as the Information Needs & Uses literature. The subsequent two decades have seen this perspective, focussing theoretical attention on the information user and his/her needs rather than information systems, move from being an 'alternative' paradigm to being very much the mainstream, not only in academic information research but across the information professions. In doing so, it has, without question, not only greatly increased our understanding of the complex relationship between people and information, but also contributed to the development of much more 'user-friendly' information services and systems. However, as this paper will explore, despite many theoretical developments over the last two decades, on a fundamental level most prevailing models of information behaviour, while claiming to be holistic models of the relationship between people and information, continue to focus almost exclusively on a narrow set of behaviours related to users' engagement with information systems. Despite claims to have moved beyond a systems-centric approach, this paper will argue that most prevailing approaches manifest a task-oriention that is a legacy of the field's origins in library and information system evaluation.