Brenda Dervin

Brenda Dervin | Credit ASIS&T

Brenda Dervin (1938–2022) was a US professor of communications.

Life

Brenda Louise Dervin was born in November 20, 1938 in Beverly, MA. She received her BS degree in journalism and home economics and with a minor in philosophy of religion at Cornell University in 1960, then MA and Ph.D. degrees in communication research from Michigan State University in 1971.

She started her career as a public relations assistant for the American Home Economics Association, 1961 to 1962, then worked as a communication specialist at the Center for customer affairs at the University of Wisconsin from 1963 to 1965. During 1966-1967 she was a teaching assistant for the Department of Business Law and Office Administration at Michigan State University. She eventually became a research associate for the Department of Communications, 1966-1970.

Her appointment at the School of Library and Information Sciences at Syracuse University in 1970 began her lifelong interest in library and information sciences before she moved on to the School of Communication at the University of Washington in 1977. Conversations with Richard Carter helped her to develop what has come to be known as Sense-Making Theory and Methodology. In 1986, she moved to Ohio State University where she chaired the Department of Communication before returning to research and teaching.

She died in Seattle on 31 December 2022.

Contributions

Dervin's main contribution was in developing and popularizing the study of sense-making, especially in the context of communication and library services. Her 1976 article "Strategies for Dealing with Human Information Needs: Information or Communication?" (Journal of Broadcasting, 20(3), 324–333) posited a typology of information as (1) "the innate structure or pattern of reality;...(2) the structures imputed onto reality by people' ...[and] (3) the procedures by which people acquire what they didn't previously know. From those three types, she proposed ten assumptions about information needs regarding objectivity, rationality, coping, contextuality, availability, of everyday life information seeking, or the processes that humans use to become informed. She (1983) described the information gap as the motivator for information seeking. Her work pushed information science to develop more theories of information that focused on information users outside of work contexts (everyday life).

She edited Progress in Communication Sciences for its first 14 years. In 1986 she acted as the first president of the International Communication Association.

Publications

For a list to 1997 see Clark, Kathleen D. (1997). Bibliography of writings of Brenda Dervin. 1997. [1]

• "Information needs and uses." With M. S. Nilan. Annual review of information science and technology 21 (1986): 3-33.
• "From the mind’s eye of the 'user': The sense-making qualitative-quantitative methodology." In Qualitative Research in Information Management [edited by] Jack D. Glazier, Ronald R. Powell. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1992, pp 61-84.
• "Sense-making." With Charles M. Naumer. In: Encyclopedia of library and information sciences. 3rd ed. 2010, pp 4,696-4,707; 4th ed., 2017, pp 4113-4124. A wider survey.
• Sense-making methodology reader : selected writings of Brenda Dervin. Cresskill, NJ : Hampton Press, 2003.

Honors

• University of Helsinki. Honorary doctorate in the social sciences, 2000.
• American Society for Information Science and Technology. Research in Information Science award, 2006.

Further reading

• Remembering Professor Brenda L. Dervin. Ohio State University. School of Communication. February 15, 2023. [2]
• "Dervin, Brenda." Femicon 2025. [3]
• Brief Narrative Summarizing Dervin CV. Oct 2, 2007. [4]
• Sense-Making Methodology Institute Website: Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology. Extensive resources. [5]
• Agarwal, N.K. "Making sense of sense-making: Tracing the history and development of Dervin’s Sense-making methodology." In T. Carbo & T.B. Hahn (Eds.). International perspectives on the history of information science & technology: Proceedings of the ASIS&T 2012 Pre-Conference on the History of ASIS&T and Information Science and Technology, (pp. 61-73). Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2012.
• Given, L.M., Case, D.O. and Willson, R. (2023). Looking for Information (Studies in Information, Vol. 15), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds.