Better Collaborating! Groups Facing Information in Online Contexts

Presented at the 7th International Conference on Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries, Paris (France), on May the 27th, 2015Research on how people collaborate with each other for sharing, retrieving, managing and disseminating information is still an emergent field in Library and Information Science that becomes particularly necessary when the units of analysis are groups rather than individuals, due to the inherently collaborative nature of groupal activities. The purpose of this poster is presenting the research findings of my Master Thesis on Information and Knowledge Society (Open University of Catalonia, UOC), which had the aim to study a specific case of collaborative information behavior in three completely online groups that initiated, developed and completed a teamwork project in the virtual learning environment of the UOC's Virtual Campus. The poster will be focused on the results of the research project, emphasizing those factors that favour collaboration between the members of a group when managing information in an online context. Findings reveal that the leadership style has a significant effect on collaborative information behavior, facilitating or inhibiting the appearance of collaborative informational practices. Findings also uncover that collaborative information behavior is largely determined by the way that online groups use technology. Finally, the poster will reflect the main conclusions of the study, highlighting that collaborative information behavior in completely online groups seems to be particularly influenced by the groupal socio-relational dimension, that is, the factors related to the internal group dynamics (e.g. leadership style, degree of cohesion, or group rules