I have chosen U.S. Military Veterans (veterans) as my information community for my INFO 200 Information Communities course. My personal history and family tree contain many people who served in the U.S. Military in varying capacities. My grandfather served in the Navy during WWII, my father was with the Marine Corps and served two tours of duty in Vietnam, and my husband flew for the Navy during Operation Desert Storm and retired after 26 years of service. This qualifies them all as veterans, since anyone who has served in any branch of the armed forces and separated by a means other than a dishonorable discharge is considered a veteran (Veterans Anonymous, 2017).
Veterans are an information community in that they constitute “a group of entities that blurs the boundaries between information seekers, users, and providers” (Fisher & Bishop, 2015, p. 22). The US Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) is the primary organization providing support and care to US Veterans and their families. The United States government affords veterans many benefits in compensation for their service, including but not limited to health care, disability indemnification, educational assistance, home loans, and life insurance. Veterans are extremely dependent on current and accurate information in order to understand, evaluate and utilize these benefits and services.
https://www.va.gov
Fisher and Durrance (2003) state that no matter how varied the subject of any information community, they share five common characteristics:
- They utilize technology to share information
- There is collaboration among diverse providers
- The community forms around the need to access and use information
- They attempt to remove barriers to information that prevent them from obtaining needed services.
- They find and build connections within the larger community
Veterans utilize the internet to access websites such as the official VA site where they can find information on benefits and services, sign-up for notifications, and find links to expanded information and auxiliary organizations. Organizations that support veterans collaborate on providing resources and referrals. The VA website has a listing of vetted organizations that provide additional resources on both the national and local level. Since the veterans’ information community is constructed on the need to access and use information it is imperative that they strive to remove social, political and economic barriers that would impede access. A recent study in Military Medicine suggests that veterans exploiting preferred methods of information seeking resulted in an increase in health care utilization (Fleming, Crawford, Calhoun, Kudler, & Straits-Troster, 2016). In addition to finding information, veterans attempt to connect to one another and the community at large, often through membership in associations and organizations and through the use of social media and blogs. These more informal connections often allow for what Erdelez (1999) refers to as “information encountering” where information is unexpectedly discovered while engaging in routine activities.
https://blog.feedspot.com/veterans_blogs/
https://benefits.va.gov/benefits/#
I hope to discover through my research in this course the ways in which veterans not only discover and utilize information, but to offer recommendations that expand upon traditional resources and support increased access.
References:
Erdelez, S. (1999). Information encountering: It’s more than just bumping into information. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, 25(3), 25-29. Retrieved from https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/doi/epdf/10.1002/bult.118
Fisher, K. E., & Bishop, A. P. (2015). Information communities: Defining the focus of information service. In S. Hirsch (Ed.), Information services today: An introduction (pp. 20-26). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Fisher, K. E., & Durrance, J. C. (2003). Information communities. In K. Christensen & D. Levinson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of community: From the village to the virtual world (pp. 658-661). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. Retrieved from http://libaccess.sjlibrary.org/login?url=http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/community/n248.xml
Fleming, E., Crawford, E. F., Calhoun, P. S., Kudler, H., & Straits-Toster, K. A. (2016). Veterans’ preference for receiving information about VA services: Is getting the information you want related to increased health care utilization? Military Medicine, 181, 106-110. doi: 10.7205/MILMED-D-14-00685
Veterans Anonymous (2017). What is a veteran? The legal definition [website article]. Retrieved from https://va.org/what-is-a-veteran-the-legal-definition/
Good topic to write on Beth.
I was in the Navy in San Diego and am able to utilize those benefits you mentioned. I was talking with someone who is also a vet (he is a little older) and he mentioned that some of the military personnel being discharged are having psychological issues and that they have no one to talk to so they end up calling him for advise or just to talk to someone who will listen. The VA, I think, needs to expand their outreach to better cover the mental health issues that are plaguing our Vets with PTSD.