Investigations of those who seek and use information have been an important aspect of information science since its beginnings. Some reviewers of the literature point to studies as early as 1916, or even 1902, as the start of this genre. Whatever is the case, it is clear that the explosion of scientific and technical literature during and immediately after World War II created a situation in which attention to information seeking was inevitable. Even the rapid development of computing devices (starting in 1939) and their subsequent application to the storage and manipulation of text were not enough to fully solve the problems of dissemination in the area of scientific and technical information. Hence it was that the first blossoming of information seeking and use studies tended to focus on the behaviors of scientists and engineers. Reviews of studies of this population and their information-related practices appeared almost yearly during the 1960s and continued well into the 1970s. It was not until the mid-1960s (and even then, haltingly) that we began to see attention focused on others who worked with information and knowledge: social scientists, physicians, managers and humanities scholars. Even with an expansion of focus, these investigations tended to be descriptive in nature and oriented toward traditional channels such as libraries, journals and conferences and toward practical improvements in dissemination.