01754nas a2200217   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002260000800043653002200051653001300073653002600086653002400112653002000136653003000156100001600186245010300202300001200305490000700317520119800324022001401522       2024                            d  cjun10acognitive science10aedgework10ainformation behaviour10ainformation sources10ainformation use10arepresentational exchange1 aIsto Huvila00aRepresentational Exchange and Edgework: Towards Theorising the Coping with Fragmentary Information  a362-3680 v293 aIntroduction. People face often situations when the available information is fragmentary and epistemically and ontologically different stemming from multiple incongruous systems of knowledge. While this is obvious on the basis of the vast corpus of information behaviour research to date, relatively little attention has been conducted so far to explicate the mechanisms of how people routinely manage to use such unsatisfactory sources in their pursuits.  Method. The conceptual paper describes two theoretical concepts identified in the literature. Results. The paper discusses the applicability of the notions of representational exchange and edgework to explain the mechanisms of how people parse together heterogeneous and fragmentary information together in a meaningful whole. Conclusion. The theory of representational exchange explains how people are capable of translating epistemically and ontologically incongruous types of information to work in concert. Edgework describes a type of information work necessary to parse together different forms of previous knowledge and new information with the help of (meta) information and knowledge on the two and their processes of becoming.  a1368-1613