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176 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol. 7, 2015

years. Some considered that information phenomenon was closely related to context. And others
argued that the context was not an inherent part of information (Johnson, 2003; Talja, Keso, &
Pietilinen, 1999). Without context, information will be meaningless (Kari & Savolainen, 2007).
Based on the investigation of nine residents in Taiwan, Chang and Lee found that there are three
relationships existing between information behavior and context: association, interaction and
directional (Chang & Lee, 2000). Association refers to the phenomenon that specific information
behavior will co-occur in some situation. If context affects information behavior, and then
the behavior transforms into a context factor, interaction occurs. Directional means context
encourages, affects, decides or prevents the occurrence of some information behavior. Kari and
Savolainen classified the relationship we mentioned above into 11 forms such as association,
isolation, consideration, contribution and so on (Kari & Savolainen, 2007).
It is proved in our study that the interviewees’ information source horizon is rooted in context,
and therefore they have some special characteristics as follows: 1) Reliability and persistent.
That is to say, because of the association relationship between information sources and context,
people tend to perform similar information behavior in specific context. For example, if a farmer
covers Nongke Station into his/her information source horizon, at any circumstance, he/she will
seek information from it. Thus, association between information behavior and context are reliable
and persistent to a certain degree. 2) Selectivity and abiogeny. As mentioned above, only if the
information sources are considered as useful information sources, they might be covered by the
information source horizon of information agents. Otherwise, even if the information source
physically exists, they have no opportunity to be brought into information agents’ information
source horizon. For this reason, Information source horizon has a selection function. We argue that
the specific relationship such as interaction and directional exists between information behavior
and context. In other words, in certain situation, if an information agent’s endeavor to seek
information receives a positive feedback (interaction), it will encourage the information agent to
include this information source into his/her information source horizon (directional). However,
whether or not an information agent can draw useful information from a certain information
source and bring it into his/her information source horizon are always accidental (abiogenetic). For
instance, before a farmer gets information of a job-offer, he/she may not know how to retrieve such
kind of information; only if he/she actually finds the information in a newspaper and gets the job,
he/she possibly includes newspaper into his/her information source horizon.
In summary, no other than the existence of association, interaction and directional relationships
between information behavior and context, information agent’s information source horizon
shows itself in the characteristics above. A comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of
information source horizon can be helpful not only to understand information behavior better, but
also to provide a valuable perspective to analyze how the information divide occurs.