Turning to information needs, Wilson reminded his readers that progress towards a
theoretical understanding of the idea of an idea of an “information need’ had been slow,
and gave some reasons for this. In explaining them, generated another conceptual
model for the context of information seeking – in the original. This, he suggests
(Wilson, 2005) is the “key model” of the paper, though the one least referred to. The idea
of information behaviour in context proved to be a particularly fruitful one in the
1990s, evidenced by a series of influential biannual conferences on Information Seeking
in Context (Vakkari et al., 1997; Hoglund and Wilson, 2001). It is notable that a high
proportion of such papers cite Wilson, 1981 article, explicitly or implicitly recognising
it as a seminal document for the “information in context” approach. Savolainen (1992)
identifies it as the earliest of a number of articles suggesting a refocusing of
information research on “individual actors seeking and using information in practical
contexts”. Wilson, 1994 quotes several reviews to show that the beginning of a move
towards “more person-centred” studies in information behaviour is generally
attributed to his 1981 article, together with independent work by Belkin and Dervin.