ABSTRACT
Focused on the individual’s welfare, the five major social science professions include teachers and librarians (intellectual growth), social workers (daily life essentials), police officers (physical safety), and journalists (civic engagement). The information environments and experiences of these five critical professions involve information technology adaptation, information literacy concerns, and continuous professional development. The often stark divide between theoretically informed research and applied scholarship leaves practitioners with gaps in their connections between praxis and new research. As government and social policies, as well as economic influences, drive the need for evidence-based practice (EBP), those gaps in research application grow more important. For all five professions, information technology influences or even drives many professional activities.
