Ellis Information-Seeking Behavior Model

David Ellis's model, set out in his 1989 article 'A behavioural approach to information retrieval system design,' characterizes information seeking through a set of generic behavioural features rather than a fixed sequence of stages. From grounded-theory studies of how academic researchers actually look for information, Ellis identified features such as starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring and extracting. The crucial claim is that these are recurring activities whose detailed pattern and interrelation vary from person to person and task to task, so information seeking is better described as a flexible repertoire of behaviours than as a single ordered process. Because each feature maps onto a concrete capability, the model was explicitly framed to inform the design of information retrieval systems that support real seeking behaviour.