The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) honored iSchool Professor Emerita Raya Fidel at their annual meeting in November by designating her book, “Human Information Interaction: An Ecological Approach to Information Behavior,” the best information science book of 2013.

According to the ASIS&T website, the award is given to “the author of an outstanding book relevant to the information sciences, including all communication activities and information science and technology fields defined in the purpose of ASIS&T. Books are judged on their importance to information science and technology, readability, validity, originality, research significance and scholarship."

In her award-winning book, Fidel proposes a research approach that bridges the study of human information interaction and the design of information systems: cognitive work analysis (CWA). Developed by Jens Rasmussen and his colleagues, CWA embraces complexity and provides a conceptual framework and analytical tools that can harness it to create design requirements. CWA offers an ecological approach to design, analyzing the forces in the environment that shape human interaction with information.

Fidel teaches in the areas of information behavior, information systems, knowledge representation, and thesaurus construction. Her research focuses on information seeking and searching behavior.

About ASIS&T
Since 1937, the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) has been the association for information professionals leading the search for new and better theories, techniques, and technologies to improve access to information.