The field of Information Science has a long history of the study of the information needs, uses and behaviors of people, as individuals, but especially as groups or communities. In this talk, I give an overview of the history of this line of research, with particular emphasis on the methods that have been used to study user groups, some results concerning behaviors of different groups, and on the possible applicability of the methods, and the relevance of the general results, to the study of user groups in the Web searching environment. About the speaker