A review of the spiritual in information studies

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore one broad question: what do information, information processes, information services, as well as information systems and technology have to do with the spiritual?

Design/methodology/approach

The task is accomplished by conducting a literature review of 31 refereed texts in information studies. The paper proceeds by inspecting the manifestation of spirituality in information sources, generic information processes, as well as specific information processes: conceptualizing, seeking, processing, using, storing, describing and providing information.

Findings

A total of 11 relationships between information phenomena and the spiritual are discovered. Based on these, a definition of spiritual information is put forth. There are also some descriptive statistics on the corpus as a whole.

Research limitations/implications

The results are susceptible to limitations imposed by the reviewed studies themselves. Errors of interpretation were a possibility. The article suggests many directions for further research in the context of the spiritual, and discusses how to view spirituality in information science.

Practical implications

Practical implications are only mentioned here and there, because research implications are of primary concern in the investigation.

Originality/value

This paper is the first to synthesize information research in the spiritual domain. Beyond the subject area, the article demonstrates how to classify information processes, and conduct a context‐centric literature review in the field of information studies.

Citation

Kari, J. (2007), "A review of the spiritual in information studies", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 63 No. 6, pp. 935-962. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410710836439