Overview

There are more than 50 million people age 65 or older in the United States, and over the decade 2010-2019 this was the fastest growing age sector in the United States – growing by 34% during that period. (US Census Bureau) As people age, they face a number of new challenges and opportunities, ranging from the shift from salary to Social Security and retirement funds, increasing issues with health, and opportunities for extended relaxation and second careers. While seniors bring a lifetime of experience and honed skills, they face a number of new situations that involved learning new information and new ways of doing things. Information Issues for Older Americans brings together faculty from the leading Information Schools to examine information needs, behavior, and policy related to older Americans. These scholars use a variety of lenses to understand the information issues that older Americans face in their everyday lives. These lenses include information literacy from both the consumer and provider sides; information behavior to understand search strategies, evaluation of information quality and relevance, sources used, questions raised, and how these change over time; the information ecologies in which an individual lives in his or her private and professional worlds; privacy issues that arise in everyday life; information and communication technologies (ICTs), including the skills of users with these technologies, the expected and unexpected uses of these technologies, and the technology’s positive and negative impacts; how ICTs can be used to augment human intelligence and physical skills (human-computer interaction and design); how ICTs, together with traditional information institutions such as libraries and museums and social clubs, have been used to build stronger communities (community informatics). This book is a contribution to the academic literatures on information studies and aging, but it is also intended to be generally readable and be accessible to the educated public and professionals who serve older Americans such as librarians, health care workers, and workers at community centers. While there is a growing literature on health informatics for the elderly, and occasional journal articles on various other topics about information and the elderly, this is the first comprehensive book on the various information aspects of the everyday activities and concerns of older Americans.

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9781538188323

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Reviews

Aspray and other top information studies scholars expertly explore devices, domains, and dimensions of information seeking behaviors of older Americans. From genealogy to leveraging information and experience in our minds, this book is a well-crafted gem. -- Jeffrey R. Yost, author of Making IT Work: A History of Computer Services Industry (MIT Press, 2017). Computer scientists who want to expand their understanding of information usage by older Americans should read this book. This useful collection of case studies, original articles, and copious references will inform the research of anyone concerned with making technology more useful to a growing segment of our population. -- Peter A. Freeman, (former) assistant director of NSF for CISE, founding dean of computing, Georgia Tech

Author Information

William Aspray is senior research fellow at the Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has previously held senior faculty positions in the information schools at Indiana (Bloomington), Texas (Austin), and Colorado (Boulder), as well as several senior administrative appointments in research centers and nonprofit professional organizations (Charles Babbage Institute, IEEE History Center, Computing Research Association). He is the author or editor of more than 30 books and 100 articles.

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