Mooers Law: In and out of Context

Mooersʹ Law, widely referenced in the literature of Library and Information Science, has generally been misinterpreted as concluding that customers will tend not to use Information Retrieval systems that are too difficult or frustrating, when in fact the law addresses the reluctance of customers to use any type of IR system, regardless of its faults or merits, within an environment in which having information requires more effort than not having it. An expansion of Mooersʹ original law is proposed, based upon a "Scale of Information Retrieval Environments," which includes not only those types of environments addressed by Mooers, but those in which a premium is placed upon having information, as well as those in which the effort required from having information vs. not having it is fairly evenly balanced.