Conceptions of Library and Information Science (CoLIS) is a series of international conferences that provides a broad forum for the exploration and exchange of ideas in the field of Library and Information Science, Information Studies, and related disciplines. The ninth conference, which opens today and runs until Wednesday 29th June, has been organised by the Department of ALM, Uppsala University and the Division of ALM, Lund University and takes place in Uppsala, Sweden. If you would like to follow the conference remotely over the next three days, the Twitter hashtag is #CoLIS9.

John Mowbray

The conference programme comprises a range of contributions that offer empirical, theoretical and historical perspectives on Library and Information Science.  Amongst these is a co-authored paper to which I contributed. Entitled ‘The role of networking and social media tools during job search: an information behaviour perspective’, the paper is based on work completed by Centre for Social Informatics PhD student John Mowbray as part of his ESRC-funded doctoral study. John will be delivering this paper in Sweden this afternoon.

This work presents a critical analysis of the extant literature pertaining to the networking behaviours of young job seekers, and proposes a framework derived from information behaviour theory as a basis for conducting further research in this area.

When he presents the paper John will explain the three key research themes that emerged from the analysis of the literature. These are: (1) social networks, and the use of informal channels of information during job search, (2) the role of networking behaviours in job search, and (3) the adoption of social media tools. John will identify Wilson’s general model of information behaviour as a suitable framework to conduct further research to explore the processes whereby young job seekers engage in networking behaviours in both offline and online environments.

The full text of the paper is available as a PDF file from the Edinburgh Napier repository. The presentation slides are available on SlideShare and below.