About
My name is Naresh नरेश narēś = nar (man) + ēś (God) = God among men = King
Agarwalअग्रवाल Agar (Egar, Ugar) + waal (pronounced na-RAISH UH-gar-waal). I’m a Professor and Director of the Information Science & Technology Concentration at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. I'm a Past President of the Association for Information Science & Technology. Read more.
Books / Research
information behavior / knowledge management
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Agarwal, N.K. (2023). Information Behavior Research in the twenty-first century: The journey so far. Informatio, 28(1), a6, 97-146. PDF
Agarwal, N. K. (2022). Integrating models and integrated models: towards a unified model of information seeking behaviour. Information Research, 27(1), paper 922.
Agarwal, N.K. & Lu, W. (2020). Response to non-response: How people react when their smartphone messages and calls are ignored. 83rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology, October 23-28, 2020, 57, e260, 1-14. (ASIS&T SIG USE Best Information Behavior Conference Paper Award, 2020)
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About
My name is Naresh नरेश narēś = nar (man) + ēś (God) = God among men = King Agarwalअग्रवाल Agar (Egar, Ugar) + waal (pronounced na-RAISH UH-gar-waal). I’m a Professor and Director of the Information Science & Technology Concentration at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. I'm a Past President of the Association for Information Science & Technology.
My research interest is in Information Behavior and Knowledge Management. These are areas of study in the field of Information Science and Technology. I am interested in studying how people go about looking for information and the contextual factors that impact the way people choose information sources. I'm also interested in other aspects of behavior when people find information serendipitously, and when they avoid or stop information flow.
At Simmons, I teach courses in Information Science & Technology - web development & information architecture, knowledge management, theories of information science, as well as technology for information professionals and evaluation of information services (both online and face-to-face) to Masters students enrolled for a degree in Library & Information Science. I've also taught an undergraduate course in Happiness and Leadership.
"The various influences, my approach and purpose in life have been about synthesis – in trying to reconcile apparent contradictions and differences, instead of seeing the world in the form of stereotypes and labels. While classification is natural and necessary to apply broad strokes in understanding the world, I’ve realized that it is a simplistic exercise and devoid of reality, something best understood as stereotyping. It has always been my endeavor to find commonalities among differences, and to respect differences among commonalities. Thus, when I see differences, I try to look for what’s similar and common. When I see an attempt to paint everything with one broad stroke of color, I try to look for differences – a concept of looking for ‘one’ in the ‘many’ and to look for ‘many’ in the ‘one’." (Agarwal, 2012)
Born and brought up in Gangtok, Sikkim in the Indian Himalayas, I spent almost fourteen years in Singapore, where I earned a Bachelors in Applied Science (Computer Engineering) from Nanyang Technological University, and later a Ph.D. in the Department of Information Systems, School of Computing, National University of Singapore. I now live in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
