IN DEPTH
Erdelez’s ‘Information Super-Encountering’
– Useful theory for Professional Registration candidates
Demonstrating professional development is a crucial element of CILIP’s Professional registration, but for many candidates there is a question of how best to gather and present their experience – especially if CPD is not formally offered at their workplace? CILIP Fellow Andrew Shenton explores Sanda Erfelez’s information super-encounters theory and asks whether it can help candidates achieve their goals.
AROUND the turn of the millennium, Sanda Erdelez presented her theory of information encountering in several academic papers. Today, they are much cited and well regarded. Erdelez’s identification of “information super-encounterers” is especially pertinent to those of us pursuing CILIP Professional Registration.
She defines the former as people who regularly come across information relevant to them with- out purposely seeking it and view this tendency as an important element within their acquisition of information.1
No doubt lots of candidates aim to make a start in meeting the third assessment criterion – “increasing their knowledge of the wider professional context and reflecting on areas of current interest” – by browsing the pages of the Information Professional and exploring some of the addressed issues that lie beyond their own field. Erdelez’s ideas on super-encounter- ing, however, highlight discoveries we make serendipitously when our intended purposes are elsewhere. What we learn from her less focused method can form an equally effective starting point.
Radio
As an avid listener to BBC Radio Four, I have in recent years enhanced my knowledge of various
48 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Dr Andrew K. Shenton (
shenton1@outlook.com) studied information issues for over 35 years. He spent much of his working life at Monkseaton High School in the north- east of England. Andrew is now retired and has been awarded both Chartership and Fellowship by CILIP in recent years. He has also Revalidated annually.
information issues through news programmes, one-off documentaries and particular episodes of factual series broadcast by the station. I have brought some to the attention of the Informa- tion Professional’s Mediawatching column.2
My
discovery of many of these broadcasts has been the result of a “happy accident” whilst I have been listening casually. Similarly inclined television viewers can probably recall their own comparable revelations in this context, too. Parallels can be drawn between information super-encountering and Wilson and Walsh’s concept of “passive at- tention”, which includes “listening to the radio or
October-November 2024
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