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You must know the British information scientist Thomas D. Wilson. Did he mention “intermediary”? If he did, show me some quotations.

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Yes. Thomas D. Wilson clearly used the word “intermediary,” and the intermediary had a place in his information-behaviour model from an early stage.

1. Wilson’s explanation of his 1981 model

In his later account of the model, Wilson wrote that an information system might be:

“navigated either personally or by an intermediary”

He then said that the seeker or intermediary could draw upon a wider “universe of knowledge.” (informationr.net)

This is important because the intermediary was not merely added much later. Wilson said it was already present in the model published in 1981.

2. The intermediary in information searching

In Models in information behaviour research (1999), Wilson defined information searching as interaction between:

“information user—with or without an intermediary—and computer-based information systems”

Thus, he treated mediated searching as one normal form of information searching, alongside direct searching by the user. (www2.hawaii.edu)

3. Wilson’s strong historical statement

Wilson later answered a scholar who thought that adding an intermediary would modify his general model:

“the 1981 paper took the role of the intermediary into account”

He added that the intermediary’s own information need was determined by the intermediary’s social role. (informationr.net)

This point is especially interesting. Wilson did not regard the intermediary merely as a neutral mechanical channel. The intermediary was also a person in a social role, with a separate position in the information process.

4. A concrete search example

In his activity-theory paper, Wilson described a case where a person could not search certain commercial databases directly:

“The operations of that search were carried out…by the search intermediary.”

Wilson then observed that the intermediary belonged to another activity system, having its own motivation and goals. (informationr.net)

What this means

Wilson certainly recognized the intermediary. However, his usual use of the word was broader than the traditional reference interview alone. An intermediary could be a librarian or professional searcher standing between:

the information user → the information system → the information resources.

His especially valuable insight was that the intermediary has a social role, motivation, goals, and context. Therefore, the intermediary cannot always be treated as a transparent or neutral connection.

This may support your question about Belkin’s ASK. Wilson’s work shows that the intermediary and mediated searching were already established problems in British information science. But these quotations alone do not prove that ASK grew directly from the reference-interview tradition. They do show that such a historical connection is conceptually serious and should be investigated.

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Did he like the word “intermediary” as suitable? Or did he not like but have to use it because found no better word?

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I found no evidence that Wilson disliked the word “intermediary” or used it only because he could find no better word.

His writing suggests the opposite: he used it as an ordinary and suitable technical term. For example, he wrote of a system being navigated:

“either personally or by an intermediary”

Later, when another scholar treated the intermediary as a new addition to his model, Wilson strongly replied that:

“the 1981 paper took the role of the intermediary into account”

He also spoke without hesitation of the person’s:

“social role as intermediary” (proftomwilson.files.wordpress.com)

This wording matters. He did not put intermediary inside doubtful quotation marks, apologize for the word, or propose a replacement. The quotation marks around “need” show that he was questioning information need, not intermediary. Wilson elsewhere openly called “information needs” an unhelpful concept and proposed another term. He made no similar criticism of “intermediary.” (proftomwilson.files.wordpress.com)

Therefore, the safest conclusion is:

Wilson appears to have accepted “intermediary” as a useful and proper term. There is no discovered statement showing that he disliked it or regarded it as an unavoidable second-best word.

However, this conclusion concerns his published usage. It does not prove his private feelings about the word. Only a direct statement, correspondence, or interview could establish that.

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Do you think Belkin and Wilson go hand in hand theoretically? Or did Belkin’s 1980 theme influence Wilson’s 1981 theme?

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They go partly hand in hand, but they are not the same theory. Also, the evidence does not support a simple claim that Belkin’s 1980 paper created Wilson’s 1981 theme.

Wilson’s 1981 paper directly discussed Belkin. He wrote that Belkin’s “anomalous state of knowledge” led to:

“an explicitly cognitive view of the situation”

But Wilson cited Belkin’s 1978 paper, Information Concepts for Information Science, not Belkin’s 1980 ASK article at that point. (informationr.net)

Where they go together

Both scholars rejected the simple idea that a user arrives with a perfectly clear and stable information request.

For Belkin, the user has an anomalous state of knowledge. The problem in the user’s knowledge makes it difficult for the user to state exactly what information is needed. Therefore, an information system—or perhaps an intermediary—must help represent and resolve that anomaly. (tefkos.comminfo.rutgers.edu)

For Wilson, an expressed information demand is only one visible part of a wider human situation. Information seeking arises from deeper physiological, affective, or cognitive needs, shaped by the person’s role and environment. He therefore moved attention away from the isolated query toward the person in context. (ResearchGate)

Thus, they share a major direction:

The spoken question is not identical with the underlying need.

This is also the central problem of the reference interview.

Where they differ

Belkin’s main concern was information retrieval. He asked how a retrieval system could deal with a user who cannot properly specify the needed information. His ASK theory was closely connected with system design and the representation of the user’s problem.

Wilson’s field was wider. He asked why a person seeks information, what social and environmental conditions produce the need, what barriers intervene, and what sources or people the person approaches. Retrieval was only one part of this larger information-seeking process.

So one might say:

Belkin examined the cognitive difficulty inside the request. Wilson examined the human situation surrounding the request.

Belkin was more strongly cognitive and retrieval-centred. Wilson was more behavioural, social, and contextual.

Did Belkin’s 1980 theme influence Wilson’s 1981 theme?

Some influence from Belkin’s general cognitive work is certain, because Wilson explicitly discussed Belkin’s 1978 theory. But direct influence from the particular 1980 ASK paper is not yet proved.

There is also strong evidence that Wilson’s basic theme did not begin in 1980. Wilson later stated that his first models had their origin in a seminar presentation at the University of Maryland in 1971, where he tried to map the processes involved in “user needs research.” (informationr.net)

Therefore, the historical sequence seems to be:

1. Wilson had been developing his user-needs model since 1971.
2. Belkin developed his information concept during the 1970s and published it in 1978.
3. Belkin published the ASK paper in 1980.
4. Wilson published his user-studies paper in 1981 and explicitly used Belkin’s 1978 work.
5. Belkin, Oddy, and Brooks later cited Wilson’s 1981 paper in their full ASK model published in 1982. (surface.syr.edu)

This looks less like one scholar simply following the other and more like mutual development inside the same British information-science environment.

My present judgment is:

Wilson’s 1981 theory was not produced by Belkin’s 1980 ASK paper. Wilson’s basic project was older. But Belkin’s cognitive concept probably helped Wilson state and position the cognitive part of his argument.

There may also have been personal or institutional communication that the published citations do not reveal. To establish stronger influence, one would need drafts, correspondence, seminar records, acknowledgements, or Wilson’s own later recollection.

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What information problems did Wilson wish to solve or resolve through his 1981 theme?

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Wilson’s 1981 paper was mainly trying to resolve problems in information-science research, not to solve a user’s particular information problem directly.

He saw that many “user studies” collected data about libraries, documents, and systems, but did not adequately explain why a person began seeking information. The paper therefore aimed to reduce conceptual confusion and to provide “the basis for a theory of the motivations for information-seeking behaviour.” (NCCU NewDoc)

I see five main problems that Wilson wished to resolve.

1. Confusion about “information need”

Researchers often spoke as though an information need were a separate, concrete thing inside a person. Wilson thought this was misleading. A person does not normally need “information” for its own sake. The person has a more basic problem or need, and information may help satisfy it.

These basic needs could be physiological, emotional, or cognitive. Thus, information need was secondary, arising from a deeper human need. Wilson later summarized this as one of the two main propositions of his 1981 model. (informationr.net)

For example, a social worker may appear to need a report. But the deeper need may be to make a safe decision about a child, obey an institutional rule, or reduce uncertainty about a case.

2. Treating the expressed request as the real need

A library request or search query is only an observable demand. It may not reveal the original problem.

Wilson wanted researchers to distinguish among:

basic need → information-seeking behaviour → demand upon a source or system

This was a serious information problem because systems could answer the stated demand correctly while failing to help with the situation that caused it.

Here Wilson comes near Belkin and the reference-interview tradition: the words presented to the system may not adequately represent the person’s underlying condition.

3. Studying systems rather than people in context

Many user studies were really system-use studies. They counted which journals were read, which libraries were visited, or which databases were searched.

Wilson wished to turn research toward the person in context:

• the person’s work or social role;
• the environment in which the problem arose;
• the purposes for which information would be used;
• the barriers affecting the search.

Thus, the same apparent information need could produce different behaviour in different social roles and environments.

4. Failure to explain why seeking begins—or does not begin

Knowing that somebody used a source does not explain why that person acted. Nor does it explain why another person with a similar problem did nothing.

Wilson wanted a theory of the motivation for information seeking. He also included barriers between the recognition of a need and actual seeking. These might be personal, interpersonal, environmental, economic, or connected with the accessibility of sources.

Therefore, his model tried to explain both:

Why does a person seek information?

and:

Why might a person who needs help fail to seek it?

5. Separating information seeking from the person’s other activity

Wilson did not regard information seeking as an isolated activity. It normally serves some wider purpose: doing a job, making a decision, solving a practical problem, satisfying curiosity, or coping with uncertainty.

The important object of study was therefore not merely a search transaction. It was the relation between:

the person’s wider problem, the seeking process, the sources approached, and the eventual use of information.

My judgment

Wilson’s 1981 theme tried to correct a field that was beginning too late in the process. Traditional research often began when a user entered a library, asked a question, or touched an information system. Wilson wanted research to begin earlier—with the life, role, environment, and underlying need that caused the behaviour.

His central problem may be stated as:

How can information science explain a person’s movement from a real-life need, through information-seeking behaviour, to the use—or non-use—of information?

But there was a limit. Wilson gave a broad causal map rather than a detailed account of the conversational process by which an intermediary discovers and changes the user’s understanding of the problem. That narrower problem was more fully treated in the reference interview, Taylor’s question-negotiation work, and Belkin’s ASK theory. Wilson placed that interaction inside a wider human and social setting.

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It seems to me that Wilson would help information scientists understand better the general context of information needs and uses rather than solve specific information problems to realize better systems.

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Yes. That is a better reading of Wilson.

Wilson’s 1981 work was mainly explanatory, not directly system-designing. He tried to help information scientists understand the wider setting in which information seeking happens:

• the person’s basic need;
• social and work roles;
• environment;
• barriers;
• sources and intermediaries;
• later use of information.

His model could indirectly improve systems by showing what system designers had ignored. But it did not itself tell them exactly how to diagnose a user’s problem, conduct a reference interview, represent an ASK, or build a better retrieval mechanism.

A useful distinction is:

Wilson explained the context of information behaviour; Belkin tried to turn the user’s uncertain knowledge state into a problem for information-retrieval design.

Wilson asked, in effect:

Why does this person seek—or fail to seek—information in this situation?

Belkin asked more directly:

How can a retrieval system respond when the person cannot properly state what is missing?

So Wilson’s theory helps information scientists see the whole landscape. It does not by itself solve the specific transaction between the person, intermediary, and system.

This may also explain why Wilson’s use of “intermediary” remained broad. The intermediary was one element in the person’s information environment. In reference-interview theory, however, the intermediary’s questioning and interpretation become the central mechanism for discovering the real problem.

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How sensitive of cognition and context was Wilson, as the foundational elements in information science?

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Wilson was highly sensitive to both cognition and context, but not equally.

My judgment is:

Context was foundational in Wilson’s own theory. Cognition was important, but it was one part of the wider human context rather than the single foundation of information science.

In the 1981 paper, Wilson treated information seeking as arising from the person’s underlying needs. He divided these into physiological, affective, and cognitive needs. This shows that he clearly recognized cognition: people seek information to understand, learn, explain, decide, and make sense of their world. (informationr.net)

But Wilson did not isolate cognition from life. He placed the person within three connected settings:

the person → the person’s social or work role → the wider environment

The person’s cognitive condition was therefore shaped by occupation, institution, relationships, available systems, economic conditions, and other barriers. His later explanation says that the model represented the “personal, social role, and environmental context” from which information needs may arise. (informationr.net)

This makes Wilson different from a strongly cognitive theorist such as Belkin. Belkin concentrated on a difficulty in the user’s state of knowledge and asked how an information-retrieval system could respond to it. Wilson asked a wider question:

Why does this person, living and working in this particular situation, come to seek information—or fail to seek it?

So Wilson was sensitive to cognition, but he would probably resist making cognition alone the centre. A cognitive need was only one kind of underlying need. Emotional pressures, physical needs, professional duties, social relations, and environmental barriers could be equally important.

Wilson was also sensitive to use, not only seeking. Information had meaning because a person used it within some activity. A document or message was not important merely because it had been retrieved. Its value depended on the user’s purpose and situation. His broader work continued to connect information need, seeking, exchange, and use within a flow of human activity. (informationr.net)

However, there is a limit to his treatment of cognition. Wilson did not closely model:

• how knowledge is represented in the mind;
• how a vague question changes during conversation;
• how an intermediary diagnoses misunderstanding;
• how new information changes the user’s cognitive structure;
• how a retrieval system should represent the user’s uncertain problem.

Those were more central to Belkin, Taylor, and the reference-interview tradition.

Therefore, Wilson’s position may be expressed this way:

Cognition explains one inner source of information seeking; context explains the wider conditions that give that cognition meaning and shape its expression.

This seems to make context the deeper foundation in Wilson’s work. Cognition is inside context, not separate from it.

For the history of the cognitive turn, this distinction is important. Wilson participated in the movement away from system-centred information science toward the human user. Yet his contribution may be better called a contextual-human turn than a purely cognitive turn. He widened information science from retrieval transactions to the whole person acting in a social world.

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Does he have a librarian background?

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Yes. Thomas D. Wilson had a strong practical librarian background before becoming an information-science scholar.

He left school at sixteen and began work as a library assistant at Durham County Library. After military service, he returned there and completed the Library Association examinations to qualify as a professional librarian. He later became head of a small academic library and worked as a company librarian at C. A. Parsons’ nuclear research centre. (위키백과)

He then entered library education and research. In 1961 he joined the library school at Newcastle upon Tyne, and in 1972 he moved to Sheffield through a research project on library cooperation. (sheffield.ac.uk)

This background may help explain several features of his theory:

• He knew that users do not approach only formal retrieval systems.
• He understood librarians and other intermediaries as parts of a wider information environment.
• He had practical experience of work roles, institutions, libraries, and information services.
• He therefore viewed information seeking more broadly than a computer-search problem.

However, Wilson later moved well beyond traditional librarianship. He studied economics, sociology, and organization theory, and this helped him place library use inside wider social and organizational contexts. (위키백과)

So Wilson may be understood as a librarian who became a social and organizational information scientist. His librarian background was real and important, but his 1981 model was not simply a theory of reference-library service.

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2026-07-22 Mark Park