Infophilia: A Positive Psychology of Information · iSchool Illinois
MLIS, MS Ed, PhD
Developing adaptive infophilia — a theory of human information relationships for the age of AI — through public scholarship, peer-reviewed research, and tools for teaching, research, and practice.
Geographic Reach
Conference presentations, invited lectures, and collaborative work across three continents — 1996 to present. Click any marker for details.
The Framework
Adaptive infophilia holds that humans have an evolved, contextually variable love of information — a positive disposition fundamental to individual flourishing, social cohesion, and democratic life. It is a grand theory for library and information science in the age of AI.
The framework positions the infosphere (Floridi) as the moral environment, maps a spectrum of information engagement styles from vulnerable to healthy, and — critically — distinguishes adaptive infophilia (information engagement in service of the public good) from mere adaptive information extraction (technically proficient but ethically indifferent).
The theoretical stack: Tononi → Hazen & Wong → Floridi → Bronk → Coleman → Fogg.
The Infostyle Spectrum
Toolbox
Information organized, behavior understood, technologies navigated — for teaching, research, and practice.
Assessment Tool
Ten questions to discover where you are on the information engagement spectrum — from infofool to infophile.
→Weekly Publication
Public scholarship on information behavior, AI, libraries, and the information commons. Vol. 4, 2026.
→Peer-Reviewed
The foundational published introduction to the framework. Journal of Information and Knowledge, 62(1).
→Preprint
Extended preprint developing the ethics of information power and information weaponization dimensions.
→Conference Paper
Presented at the ALA Library Research Seminar 8, University of Kentucky, Lexington. Open access.
→Coming Soon
A psychometric instrument for measuring infostyle, adapted from validated scales for flow, curiosity, and epistemic engagement. Seeking international research partners.
→The Work
Six responses to six waves — information technology disruptions met with infophilia: organizing and building the commons for human flourishing.
References and resources for graduate instruction in Organization of Information. Originally created 2001 at the University of Arizona. Preserved in dLIST.
Original 2001 Toolbox → | MERIC →The field's first open access disciplinary repository for Library and Information Science scholarship. OAI-PMH compliant, internationally used, preserved in the University of Arizona repository.
UA Repository Archive → | Community Record →Founded in response to the Charleston AME Church shootings (2015). A bibliographic infrastructure for antiracism scholarship. Preserved by the Library of Congress Web Archive.
LOC Web Archive →This "mirror series" of three linked projects recovers and makes openly discoverable what the library and information science field has produced, celebrated, and named across its history. The ALISE Research Taxonomy (ART) is the generative core: it names the genres the other two projects embody, and makes future recovery possible.
A weekly serial and a living lab exploring how our love of information and connection can help us thrive, individually and collectively — avant-garde research in how we engage with knowledge, meaning, and each other. Includes a multi-part series on Bartz v. Anthropic and AI copyright implications for libraries. Vol. 4, 2026. Substack →
Adaptive Infophilia · Artificial Intelligence · Biophilia · Civic Infophilia · Infophilic Information Styles · Intellectual Freedom · Library and Information Science · Public Goods · Reading · Technophilia · Wellbeing
Series: Toolbox · Local News
A developing body of peer-reviewed work — published in SRELS Journal of Information and Knowledge (2025) and SocArXiv (2026), with papers currently under review — applying adaptive infophilia across information power, intellectual freedom, and AI ethics. Conference presentation at ALA Library Research Seminar 8 (2024). Instrument to measure individual infophilia in development.
Adaptive Infophilia as Grand Theory for iSchools — mapping the theory across faculty research areas, doctoral student pipelines, and the six research clusters of the ART. Collaborative and open.
Illustration with iSchool Illinois (pdf) → | iSchool Research Map →In response to a documented pattern of exclusionary language in LIS peer review and book reviewing this conceptual tool uses sentiment analysis to apply the tri-lens framework of intersectionality, information power, and adaptive infophilia to peer review language — flagging exclusionary language, mapping critiques to manuscript sections, and auditing phrasing for inclusion and care. Documented in Information Matters (October 2025). JASIST rejected the paper as "not Information Science" in Dec. 2025. Paper under revision following JASIST rejection. Project continues.
Information Matters article →The next frontier for LIS: festschriften full text, dLIST, and E-LIS subject repository materials as a corpus, along with relevant institutional repositories (e.g. ALA, CALA, Illinois which hosts conference proceedings) for LIS-specific AI training data — the field's intellectual history made available to the field's own future.