Happiness: Exploring Relationship with Information and Place in Information Science Research and Education

摘要

Research in information seeking behavior has looked at theway a person goes about looking for information whenfaced with a need for information. However, therelationship between happiness and information and howthis information impacts happiness is often left out of thepicture. Also, higher education in the field has not exploredhappiness as a learning outcome even though research hasshown that a person can learn and practice to be happy.This paper discusses the concepts of information andhappiness. Though a listing of my 7 commandments in life,a preliminary attempt will be made to highlight the possibleinter-relationships between happiness and information. Thisis a step in the direction to try and find synergies betweeninformation and happiness. Also, the possible role ofhappiness in Information Science research and inInformation Science education will be discussed. Byrecognizing happiness as a construct and taking up theteaching and learning of happiness, we should be able tobring about transformative learning.