Information Phenomena in Serious Leisure
In library and information science (LIS), we seek to understand the nature, organization, and use of information in life. Scholarship, to this end, has been unevenly distributed. Research has predominantly focused on academic or professional contexts, which are a narrow slice of the human experience. There are a minority of studies of information phenomena within everyday situations, and only a few about the universally cherished realm of leisure. As a result, theoretical insights about the engagement with information are unduly narrow and rational in character, and information provision to everyday life and leisure settings may fall short of potential. To broaden understanding and to better serve leisure audiences, I am exploring information phenomena in the context of serious leisure (Stebbins, 2001).
To organize my research career, I draw upon the Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP), a grounded theory of leisure introduced in 1973 by sociologist Robert A. Stebbins. Today the SLP has evolved into the predominant theoretical framework of leisure and is at the center of an international, interdisciplinary research program. The SLP provides macrosocial, microsocial, and psychological insights into the leisure experience. As a map of the leisure universe, it classifies leisure activities, establishes their general orientation to information, and identifies their social organization—supplying helpful definitions and parameters for information research.
Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of, "an activity that participants find so substantial and interesting that, in the typical case, they launch themselves on a leisure career centered on acquiring and expressing its special skills, knowledge, and experience" (Stebbins, 1992, p. 3; see the website). Three main forms of serious leisure are amateurism, volunteering, and hobbies. To quickly grasp the essence of serious leisure it helps to reflect upon one's own favorite non-work activities that have been cultivated over a lifetime and which generate feelings of pleasure, challenge, and accomplishment. Moreover, serious leisure takes the form of a career that involves learning, engagement with information is at its heart. While many social and psychological features of serious leisure have been explicated, there has been no sustained attention to information phenomena therein. My theoretical work explores the information dimension of serious leisure (Hartel, 2003, 2005) and my empirical research entails description and analysis of information in various types of serious leisure (my most significant work to date has been my dissertation on the hobby of gourmet cooking).
To organize my research career, I draw upon the Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP), a grounded theory of leisure introduced in 1973 by sociologist Robert A. Stebbins. Today the SLP has evolved into the predominant theoretical framework of leisure and is at the center of an international, interdisciplinary research program. The SLP provides macrosocial, microsocial, and psychological insights into the leisure experience. As a map of the leisure universe, it classifies leisure activities, establishes their general orientation to information, and identifies their social organization—supplying helpful definitions and parameters for information research.
Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of, "an activity that participants find so substantial and interesting that, in the typical case, they launch themselves on a leisure career centered on acquiring and expressing its special skills, knowledge, and experience" (Stebbins, 1992, p. 3; see the website). Three main forms of serious leisure are amateurism, volunteering, and hobbies. To quickly grasp the essence of serious leisure it helps to reflect upon one's own favorite non-work activities that have been cultivated over a lifetime and which generate feelings of pleasure, challenge, and accomplishment. Moreover, serious leisure takes the form of a career that involves learning, engagement with information is at its heart. While many social and psychological features of serious leisure have been explicated, there has been no sustained attention to information phenomena therein. My theoretical work explores the information dimension of serious leisure (Hartel, 2003, 2005) and my empirical research entails description and analysis of information in various types of serious leisure (my most significant work to date has been my dissertation on the hobby of gourmet cooking).
A Socio-cognitivie, Domain Analytic Approach
Birger Hjorland, domain analyst.
A socio-cognitive information metatheory, domain analysis (Hjørland & Albrechtsen, 1995), serves as my lens for examining information in serious leisure. Domain analysis orients analytical attention to the community as unit of analysis and has been used by other scholars to discover informational patterns within academic specialties and professions. Unlike casual or project-based forms of leisure, serious leisure pursuits generate social worlds, collectives resembling academic specialties, that are amendable to a socio-cognitive, domain analytic approach. In domain analysis there are 11 possible research issues per realm (Hjørland, 2002), and I am focused on information seeking and use, genres and documents, and information organization within serious leisure. The SLP and domain analysis can be married to organize systematic, comparative, cumulative research into information phenomena in and across serious leisure.
The Serious Leisure Perspective Website
Since 2006, I have managed a website dedicated to the Serious Leisure Perspective (shown below), in collaboration with sociologist Robert A. Stebbins, the originator of the SLP. The website contains pages devoted to basic concepts, history, leisure education, a biography of Robert A. Stebbins, news, new works, conferences, researchers, a full text digital library, and a bibliography. It is a well regarded resource for information about serious leisure and leisure in general, and it receives more than 40 hits daily from around the world.
The Serious Leisure Perspective website at: http://www.soci.ucalgary.ca/seriousleisure/
Reading course on the Serious Leisure Perspective
Students at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto are invited to take a Reading Course on the Serious Leisure Perspective. To participate, you can learn more here and then contact me by email at least a month before the start of the semester. Students outside the University of Toronto can independently follow a Reading Guide on the SLP .
Related Work
Hartel, J. (2010). Hobby and leisure information and its user. In M. J. Bates, & M. N. Maack (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences (3rd Edition.). New York: Taylor and Francis.
Hartel, J. (2008). The serious leisure perspective: Implications for public libraries. Reference Renaissance Conference, Denver, CO. (conference presentation)
Kari, J., & Hartel, J. (2007). Information and higher things in life: Addressing the pleasurable and the profound in information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(8), 1131-1147.
Hartel, J. (2006). Taking leisure seriously: Information realities in leisure time. ASIST Annual Meeting, Austin, TX. (conference panel)
Hartel, J. (2005). Serious leisure. In K. Fisher, S. Erdelez, & L. McKechnie (Eds.), Theories of information behavior: A researcher’s guide (pp. 313-317). Medford, NJ: Information Today.
Hartel, J. (2003). The serious leisure frontier in library and information science: Hobby domains. Knowledge Organization, 30(3/4), 228-238.
Hartel, J. (2008). The serious leisure perspective: Implications for public libraries. Reference Renaissance Conference, Denver, CO. (conference presentation)
Kari, J., & Hartel, J. (2007). Information and higher things in life: Addressing the pleasurable and the profound in information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(8), 1131-1147.
Hartel, J. (2006). Taking leisure seriously: Information realities in leisure time. ASIST Annual Meeting, Austin, TX. (conference panel)
Hartel, J. (2005). Serious leisure. In K. Fisher, S. Erdelez, & L. McKechnie (Eds.), Theories of information behavior: A researcher’s guide (pp. 313-317). Medford, NJ: Information Today.
Hartel, J. (2003). The serious leisure frontier in library and information science: Hobby domains. Knowledge Organization, 30(3/4), 228-238.