Compare methods

	Everyday Life Information Seeking	Wilson Information Behavior Model
Field	Library Information Science	Library Information Science
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1995	1999
Originator	Reijo Savolainen	Tom D. Wilson
Type	Socio-cultural model of non-work, everyday information seeking	Macro-model of information behaviour from need through seeking to use
Seminal source	Savolainen, R. (1995). Everyday life information seeking: Approaching information seeking in the context of 'way of life'. Library & Information Science Research, 17(3), 259-294.	Wilson, T. D. (1999). Models in information behaviour research. Journal of Documentation, 55(3), 249-270.
Aliases	ELIS, Savolainen ELIS Model, Way of Life and Mastery of Life Model, Non-Work Information Seeking	Wilson Model of Information Behaviour, Wilson 1981 / 1996 Model, Nested Model of Information Behaviour, Intervening Variables Model
Related	3	3
Summary	Everyday Life Information Seeking (ELIS), introduced by Reijo Savolainen in his 1995 article in Library & Information Science Research, shifts the study of information behaviour away from work and professional tasks toward the ordinary, non-work information practices of daily life. Savolainen explains these practices through two linked concepts borrowed in part from Bourdieu: 'way of life,' the taken-for-granted order of things that structures how a person spends time, money and attention, and 'mastery of life,' the active effort to keep that order coherent and to restore it when disrupted. Both are shaped by habitus and social class, which mold a person's source preferences and problem-solving styles. ELIS thus situates everyday seeking within a socio-cultural and value framework rather than treating it as isolated, task-driven retrieval.	Tom Wilson's models of information behaviour, first sketched in his 1981 paper 'On user studies and information needs' and revisited in his 1999 'Models in information behaviour research,' provide an overarching map of how information behaviour arises and unfolds. Information need is treated not as a primitive but as something secondary to more basic human needs, emerging from a person-in-context. That need drives information-seeking behaviour, but the path from need to seeking is shaped by intervening variables — psychological, demographic, role-related, environmental and source-related — that act as barriers or enablers, and by activating mechanisms drawn from theories of stress and coping, risk and reward, and self-efficacy. The resulting seeking can take several modes, and information processing and use feed back to alter the original need.