Library Trends

The serious leisure perspective is introduced and its relationship to library and information science (LIS) set out. The relationship is twofold: the perspective offers a distinctive approach both to research and to practice in this discipline. That is, the perspective bridges a critical gap that has separated the fields of LIS and leisure studies, manifested in both as scant concern with the central interest of the other. This gap is bridged by providing the first with a conceptual framework for understanding leisure and leisure activities, which can help guide researchers and practitioners working on the retrieval and dissemination of information bearing on such activities. The serious leisure perspective is the theoretic structure that synthesizes three main forms of leisure. Serious leisure is the systematic pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core activity that captivates the participant with its challenges and complexity. Casual leisure is an immediately, intrinsically rewarding, relatively short-lived pleasurable core activity, requiring little or no special training to enjoy it. Project-based leisure refers to a short term, reasonably complicated, one-shot or occasional, though infrequent, creative undertaking carried out in free time. Serious leisure is the most complex of these three, offering thereby the richest lode for LIS researchers and practitioners to mine. The perspective is a vehicle for systematically exploring people's use and dissemination of information during free time.