Information Avoidance in the Archival Context

Abstract

Information avoidance (IA) has been researched across several disciplines like psychology, economics, consumer health informatics, communications, and the information sciences, but the exploration of this phenomenon in archives is nearly non-existent. As information professionals, IA should be seen as a relevant concern to archivists as it may impact how people interact with archival materials, and more importantly how they may avoid certain materials, or the archives altogether. My study provides an extensive overview of IA in the archival context with a systematic literature review across disciplines and through qualitative interviews with 12 archivists across the United States of varying experience levels and from varying institution types. The aim is to explore how they think about IA in archives and how they may have experienced it in their work to answer the two research questions: 1) What abstract ideas do archivists have about IA as it relates to archives? 2) How do archivists experience IA in their daily work? Thematic analysis and synthesis grids were used to converge the transcripts into five key themes and findings about who is susceptible to IA, the contributing variables that impact and are impacted by IA, how IA manifests, real life applications of IA, and specific archival practices and concepts that impact and are impacted by IA in the context of archival work and research. Interpretations of this data resulted in theoretical models and implications that draw on existing understandings, as well as new understandings of IA that impact the information lifecycle of archival records and how people interact with them. These contributions to the archival and IA literatures can be used as a roadmap that will allow archivists to approach their work with a more mindful, and hopefully empathetic, ethic of care in handling information, understanding the costs and benefits of those decisions and actions, and better serving their patrons.