This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Nikoi, S. K. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Information Needs of NGOs: a case study of NGO development workers in the northern region of Ghana

Department of Information Science, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU, United Kingdom, sahmn{at}yahoo.co.uk

This article is about the information behaviour of non-governmental organizations. Despite their rise to development prominence since the 1980s and their growing importance in the socio-economic development of many developing countries, studies focusing directly on the information activities of NGOs have received tangential treatment. The findings presented in this article are based on a qualitative study carried out between 2001 and 2005 to investigate the information behaviour of NGO development workers in the northern region of Ghana. Three major dimensions of need emerged from this study: sociological, cognitive and ecological information needs. The article concludes that instead of the purely cognitive viewpoint which has dominated user needs studies within information science over the years, studies into human information behaviour should take as their starting point a socio-cognitive and political perspective.

Key Words: information behaviour • information needs • non-governmental organizations • development workers • Ghana

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?