Diabetes
En studie om informationsbehov och informationssökning kring sjukdomen
The aim of this study has been to examine how people with the chronic disease diabetes are seek-ing information about their disease. The study also look at the sources, which are mainly used, and the information behavior of the participants in this study. Especially in diabetes health care the idea of empowerment is central, which means that the patients need a lot of information to get know-ledge and become empowered. The study also examine the public library as a resource of health information, and for that purpose an examination of the OPAC catalog in two public libraries has been done, using the word ?diabetes? to illustrate the literature and other medias related to di-abetes. With this part of the study a quantitative method has been used. Qualitative interviews have been used both with people who has diabetes and with librarians in the examined libraries who are responsible for the department of medical literature in the library.The study used Carol Kuhlthau´s theory about uncertainty in the information seeking process in which she propose that seeking information is a holistic experience. In the process of seeking information there are different levels, where the user experience a lot of feelings before the seeking process is ended. Though there are suggestions that the idea of empowerment emanates from Paulo Freire´s theory of emancipation pedagogy, his theory is also relevant in this study.This study reveals that for those participants with diabetes the public library is not a place where they seek information about diabetes. The primary source is the health care where they go for regularly controls. But when they seek information by themselves almost everybody used Inter-net as their main source. For the informants that not used Internet as often as the others, their social relations where more important to get information. The need of information appeared more impor-tant when the metabolic control was unpleasant, otherwise most of them were looking for informa-tion about new facilities as; blood glucose tester and research about insulin. In the libraries both librarians had noticed that people did not ask as many question as before about illness as in earlier days, which could be related to the fact, that information about health care is more easily found today.