What does a newcomer digital librarian need to know? Exploring information seeking behavior of newcomer digital librarians in academic libraries during organizational entry

Digital librarianship, as a newly-created interdisciplinary specialization within librarianship, does not have a strong support for newcomer organizational socialization as the specialization itself is still evolving. This exploratory study, as one part of my dissertation, investigates the organizational socialization processes of newcomer digital librarians in ARL academic libraries. Following the well-developed procedures of Dervin's Sense-Making approach, this study focuses on the proactive, user-centered information seeking practices and processes during organizational entry. Specifically, the study investigates four dimensions of organizational socialization sense-making, including (1) situation: organizational situations that lead to needs for socialization information seeking; (2) gap: questions and confusions newcomer digital librarians have in situations in which information needs arise; (3) bridge: information seeking tactics that digital librarians use to acquire socialization information; and (4) outcome: positive and negative outcomes of socialization information acquisition.