ABSTRACT
The term "user studies" is a consolidated designation in Brazil that seek to aggregate the investigations that roughly involve people as informants. However, it is necessary to tense the terms user and subject present in these studies and the field of Library and Information Science because both bring conceptual and theoretical implications that reverberate in different ways of looking at individuals. Thus, this article aims to discuss user studies and informational practices to clarify the characteristics of these approaches that come together and move apart through human beings (users versus informational subject). We present researches that sought to systematize the presence of users and or subjects in Information Science, which demonstrates both an unpretentious use of the term user and a growing concern with the conceptual construction of the informational subject. Highlight informational practices as an approach distinct from user studies, considering the particular way of understanding and interpreting informational actions of subjects that convoke other theories of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Keywords:
User Studies; Informational Practices; Informational Subject; Information User