Everyday Life Information Seeking

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.