Birger Hjørland's Manichean misconstruction of Marcia Bates' work

It is argued and demonstrated that Birger Hjorland's critiques of Marcia Bates' articles on the nature of information and the nature of browsing misrepresent the content of these articles, and further, frame the argument as a Manichean conflict between Hjorland's enlightened “discursive” and social approach versus Bates' benighted behavioral approach. It is argued that Bates' work not only contains much of value that has been ignored by Hjorland but also contains ideas that mostly complement, rather than conflict with, those of Hjorland. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.