Infophilia: A Positive Psychology of Information · iSchool Illinois
MLIS, MS Ed, PhD
Infophilia is the human love of information and connections — and the name of the interdisciplinary research program Anita S. Coleman established in 2023 to study it. At its center is adaptive infophilia, Coleman's framework for understanding human information relationships in the age of AI, the era of intelligent systems, developed 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 connections can help us thrive, individually and collectively — avant-garde research in how we engage with knowledge, meaning, and each other. The program is organized through five connected lenses: Information Styles, Information Stories, Information Histories, Information Futures, and Civic Infophilia. 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 a grand theory for iSchools — an illustrative, independent mapping of the framework's research areas across Illinois iSchool faculty and doctoral pipelines. A separate exercise from ALISE Research Taxonomy (ART) committee work.
Early Illustration with iSchool Illinois (pdf) → | iSchool Research Map →A conceptual AI tool for examining the language of peer review. Review Reveal uses sentiment analysis and a tri-lens framework—intersectionality, information power, and adaptive infophilia—to flag exclusionary language, map critiques to manuscript sections, and surface patterns in how scholarly judgments are expressed. The project explores whether AI can make peer review more transparent, reflective, and humane.
Information Matters article →The next frontier for LIS: assembling the field's own scholarship — festschriften full text, dLIST, E-LIS, and institutional repositories such as ALAIR, CALASYS, and the ALISE conference proceedings — as a rights-respecting corpus for LIS-specific AI training, built with the consent and governance the field's own values require. The field's intellectual history, made available to the field's own future.