Elfreda A. Chatman

Fulton, Crystal. "An Ordinary Life in the Round: Elfreda Annmary Chatman." Libraries & the Cultural Record 45, no. 2 (2010): 238-59.
Elfreda Annmary Chatman was one of the preeminent library and information science scholars during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. The influence of her research on the work of other and through her students continues. Focusing her research and theory development on the information behavior of the ordinary people around her, Chatman highlighted the importance of studying everyday life contexts and helped shape the direction of research for many scholars to examine information in everyday life circumstances. Her middle-range theories were intended to enable information researchers to understand the information behavior of individual and group and to facilitate the development of policies and practices to help people experiencing everyday information problems.


Thompson, Kim M.. "Remembering Elfreda Chatman: A Champion of Theory Development in Library and Information Science Education." Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 50, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 119-26.

This article tracks the process of constructing theory within the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) through an examination of Elfreda A. Chatman's research. Chatman notes in her early publications that she did not enter the field with the intent to create theory, but as she applied established theories, she noted that there were certain aspects of the behavior she observed that were not accounted for in the theories she was analyzing. She turned her focus to the social barriers to information access and began to frame her work with concepts and propositions that explained what she observed. By examining Chatman's use of key theories from the social sciences, this article demonstrates the viability of the application and creation of social theory within the LIS discipline.


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