This study investigates, within the current health care situation, the interrelationship of the user, resources and tool in the design of a prototype WELLNESS database-driven web site. A shift has taken place in health care, in which the base of conventional medicine has broadened to integrate other systems, practices and worldviews. These include complementary and alternative medicine, health promotion, disease prevention and wellness. Emphasis is placed on the need to take personal responsibility for one's own health and wellness. The global burden of chronic disease, reaching epidemic proportions, is increasingly linked to risk factors resulting from personal lifestyle choices. The growing evidence of the user's need to make personal, informed, lifestyle choices and their reliance on the Web for health information, required investigation. WELLNESS, a specific orientation to health and wellness, formed the framework within which the user and resources were defined and the tool designed. The user was profiled as the WELLNESS health information seeker, hereby contributing significantly to an understanding of the user in this new context. The user profile informed the establishment of resource selection criteria and tool design. The identification of WELLNESS content selection criteria, within a five-dimensional model, was required to ensure quality, relevant and credible resources. The tool is comprised of the WELLNESS thesaurus and WELLNESS database-driven web site. The WELLNESS thesaurus was constructed based on a combination of relevant thesauri. It will be used as an indexing tool. An investigation of existing health information web sites highlighted the importance of designing a specific WELLNESS database-driven web site. A database host was identified against which the original study's conceptual schema was assessed. A low-fidelity prototype web site was designed as the interface between the WELLNESS health information seeker and the database of WELLNESS health information resources. This study has epidemiological, philosophical, epistemological, sociological and psychological relevance. The provision of access to WELLNESS health information resources, made available in the WELLNESS database-driven web site, for personal, informed lifestyle choice by the WELLNESS health information seeker could potentially contribute to the reduction of the global burden of chronic disease. / Information Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Information Science)

La pandémie de la COVID-19, dont les effets se font ressentir à partir de la fin de l’année 2019, domine toutes les dimensions de la vie dans le monde entier. La communauté internationale à travers l’OMS incite les pays à se confiner, compte tenu du nombre de cas et de morts en augmentation. Malgré la découverte des vaccins, l’isolement et le confinement se poursuivent. La COVID-19 a également d’importantes conséquences sur la vie professionnelle. Pour nombre de groupes professionnels, la crise sanitaire se traduit par une adaptation à cette nouvelle forme de travail. Le confinement entraîne la mise en place de modes de travail inhabituels comme le télétravail auquel la plupart des cadres professionnels n’était pas préparée. La structure hybride du télétravail risque de réduire les frontières entre la vie professionnelle et la vie privée et de menacer le droit à la vie privée. Il est incontestable que la COVID-19 a aussi des impacts profonds sur les manières de travailler des professionnels d’information. Notre étude vise à obtenir une meilleure compréhension des effets du télétravail en confinement sur les services et les bibliothécaires de référence des bibliothèques universitaires dans la période pandémique en Turquie. Dans cette étude quantitative, la méthode privilégiée était l’enquête par questionnaire en ligne. Selon les données que nous avons collectées par l’intermédiaire d’un questionnaire en ligne, nous avons constaté que le télétravail en confinement estompait les frontières entre la sphère professionnelle et la sphère privée des bibliothécaires de référence surtout avec enfant(s) ou en couple. Cette étude nous a également permis de déterminer les types de services de référence et les ressources, surtout numériques, pour offrir ce service. Elle nous a aidé aussi à évaluer les effets des facteurs comme le genre et l’infrastructure technologique, et à voir à quel niveau le domicile convenait pour ce type de travail. Selon nous, les résultats de cette recherche pourraient être révélateurs pour déterminer la feuille de route dans ce processus. Aussi, notre étude contribuera à combler les manques dans ce domaine et à identifier des pistes de réflexion pour les recherches futures. / The COVID-19 pandemic whose effects have been felt from the end of 2019, has dominated all aspects of public life across the globe. International community through the WHO incite countries to lock down because of the increasing number of cases and deaths. Despite the discovery of vaccines, isolation and lockdown continue. The global spread of the coronavirus has significant consequences on professional life. For many professionals, this health crisis resulted in adaptation to a new form of working. The lockdown introduced new and unusual ways of working like telecommuting for whom most of the professionals were not prepared. Hybrid structure of telecommuting could reduce boundaries between professional and personal life and threaten right to privacy. There is compelling evidence that COVID-19 has also deep impacts on the way that information professionals work. Our study aimed at understanding the effects of telecommuting on private sphere, and changes in reference services offered by university librarians during pandemic in Turkey. Our studies show the consequences of social distancing on reference services, which normally necessitate a proximity between librarian and user, and how telecommuting during the lockdown blur boundaries between professional and private sphere. In the “new normal”, private sphere is a hybrid space which includes both spheres. The method that we have adopted was online questionnaire survey to obtain a portrait of the impacts of telecommuting during the lockdown on references services and on reference librarians who are working at university libraries in Turkey. In our opinion, our study would fill the lack in this field and contribute to adopt measures especially for the future. Using data provided by an Internet-based survey questionnaire, our study aimed also aimed at grasping new definitions of work introduced by the “new normal” and at observing the effects of new professional perspectives on information sciences and especially on reference librarians in Turkey. Also, this study helped us to understand changes in factors like gender, social divide, and private life in this unprecedented period. In our opinion, the results of this study could be revealing to determine the roadmap in this process.