The video moves (or like Cindy Lauper, bops) chronologically from one information behavior scholar to another, propelled by synthesizers, giving viewers a fun and expeditious intellectual history of the era. A conclusion (which riffs on Robert Palmer’s hit, “Addicted to Love”) reprises each contribution and states its longer-term repercussions on the information behavior literature and field. For example, the turn towards the affective dimension of information behavior and newfound critical concerns with information equity, are stated as the lasting impacts of Kuhlthau and Chatman, respectively.

This is the second video I have made using JibJab, an online platform that allows users to create entertaining music videos that are personalized through photographs of one’s aquaintances. (My first JibJab production was the 2022 holiday message to information science, Information Science Macareindeer.) It is fair for information science stakeholders to ask, “Are comedic, singing and dancing versions of our luminaries the best way to disseminate ideas?” My answer is, unequivocally, “Yes.” Historically, information science has not built bridges between its intellectual capital and popular culture, leaving us potentially unknown and irrelevant outside our relatively small scholarly and professional communities of practice. And, I have found that students today feel even seminal papers to be inaccessible or dry; more lively framings are an urgent necessity to prevent their obsolescence. On a personal note, I trust my creative instincts and the joyful spark that brought these remote movements of the 1980s together.