Sessions Held at the 1999 ASIS Annual Meeting


Session 1: Historical Perspectives on Information Technology

Moderator: Trudi Bellardo Hahn

Session description: This session drew upon a range of sources (from economic history, the history of copyright, from fictional representations, and from the history of library and information studies) to examine and present different understandings of information technology and of information infrastructure. It aimed to demonstrate the relevance of history to understanding and influencing current developments.

Paper 1. Title: What Should We Understand by Information Technology (and Some Hints at Other Questions)?

Author: Julian Warner

Paper 2. Title: How Popular Culture Shapes Our Perception and Reception of Information Technologies.

Author: Cheryl Malone

Paper 3. Title: Irony or Necessity: The Great Society, the Information Economy and the NCLIS

Author: Colin B. Burke



Session 2: Historical Perspectives on Knowledge Dissemination

Moderator: Julian Warner

Session description: The session was concerned with contrasting approaches to information storage, retrieval and dissemination, covering a range of historical periods and disciplines. It reexamined some of the widely acknowledge antecedents of modern information science (for instance, Bradford and Lotka) and its less well-known medieval precursors.

Paper 1. Title: The Medieval Intellectual Foundations of Modern Information Science.

Author: Lawrence J. McCrank

Paper 2. Title: The Probability Structure of Human Knowledge: A Historical and Practitioner Viewpoint.

Author: Stephen J. Bensman Ph.D.

Paper 3: Title: From Revolution to Orthodoxy: A History of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science

Author: Mikel Breitenstein

Paper 4. Title: ISI's Activities in the Chemical Information Area

Author: Eugene Garfield (and others)



Session 3: Fifty Years of JASIS; Perspectives on Publishing in Information Science

Moderator: Trudi Bellardo Hahn

Session description: This session began with a short historical studies of JASIS over the past 50 years that highlight some of the changes in the publishing patterns of our field. The rest of the session featured a panel of three editors in the field who discussed publishing issues, past and current and past.

Paper 1. Title: Defining What Information Science is or Should Be: A Survey and Review of a Half-Century of Published Pronouncements

Author: Ben Lipetz

Panel Discussion: Fifty Years of JASIS and IS Publishing: the Editors' Perspectives

Speakers:

Donald H. Kraft

Charles T. Meadow

Tefko Saracevic


For more information contact:   Dr. Thomas Froehlich.
Comments may be sent to:  tfroehli@kent.edu