The death of the user
Howard Rosenbaum (Indiana U.) Elisabeth Davenport (Napier U.) Leah Lievrouw (U. California, Los Angeles) Ron Day (Wayne State U.)
Presented at
ASIST 2003 Annual Meeting -- Humanizing Information Technology: From Ideas to Bits and Back (ASIST AM 03 2003), Westin Long Beach, Long Beach, California, October 20 - 23, 2003
Abstract
This panel critically investigates the theoretical and practical issues involved with the well-established concept of “the user” in Library and Information Science. It suggests that digital information and communication technologies and systems are theoretically and practically undermining this concept, a concept that was already weak in its ability to fully account for agency in many events of information and knowledge. [SPONSORED BY SIG/HFIS AND SIG/CRIT.]
Pioneering women in information science
Alexander Justice (Loyola Marymount U.) Laurie J. Bonnici (Georgia Southern U.) Helen Plant (Leeds Metropolitan U.) Jonathan Furner (U. California, Los Angeles) Shawne D. Miksa (U. North Texas) Kathryn La Barre (Indiana U.)
Presented at
ASIST 2003 Annual Meeting -- Humanizing Information Technology: From Ideas to Bits and Back (ASIST AM 03 2003), Westin Long Beach, Long Beach, California, October 20 - 23, 2003
Abstract
We will to examine the lives and work in information science of six pioneering women -- Helen Brownson, Elfreda Chatman, Edith Ditmas, Margaret Egan, Barbara Kyle, and Phyllis Richmond. In careers that collectively span more than seventy years, these women have had tremendous impact on our field. Yet the full extent of their influence has often gone unrecognized in the secondary literature. In this session, we will seek to reveal these pioneers? contributions in such areas as documentation, classification, information retrieval, and social epistemology; to identify reasons for the historical neglect of some of these contributions; and to provide links to our past that will enhance our understanding of current theory and practice in the field of library and information science.
[SPONSORED BY SIG/HFIS]
A science of public knowledge? Theoretical foundations of LIS
Concepción S. Wilson (U. New South Wales) Shawne D. Miksa (U. North Texas) Anita Coleman (U. Arizona) Julian Warner (Queen's U., Belfast)
Presented at
ASIST 2003 Annual Meeting -- Humanizing Information Technology: From Ideas to Bits and Back (ASIST AM 03 2003), Westin Long Beach, Long Beach, California, October 20 - 23, 2003
Abstract
Calls have regularly been made for the identification and development of a body of theory that may serve as a foundation for information science. To this end, Jesse Shera popularized the notion of social epistemology; bibliometricians have proposed models of human document-processing behavior; Patrick Wilson and others have made strides towards integrating library science, bibliometrics, and information science in a broad science of public knowledge. In this session, we examine several related aspects of the ongoing quest to map the intellectual structure of our field and to consolidate its theoretical foundations. The conceptual relationships between bibliometrics, informetrics and related fields are explored; the historical connections between classification and information retrieval researchers are examined; and the distinction between information science and information technology is analyzed both bibliometrically and from the perspective of social epistemology. [SPONSORED BY SIG-HFIS]
Visual Containment of Cultural Forms: An Examination of Visual Epistemologies and Scopic Regimes
Mikel Breitenstein (Breitenstein Medical Associates, Inc.), Marija Dalbello (Rutgers), Ron Day (Wayne State University), Ann Simonds (University of Toronto), Morris (Muhchyun) Tang (Rutgers)
Presented at
ASIST 2003 Annual Meeting -- Humanizing Information Technology: From Ideas to Bits and Back (ASIST AM 03 2003), Westin Long Beach, Long Beach, California, October 20 - 23, 2003
Abstract
Visual Containment of Cultural Forms: An Examination of Visual Epistemologies and Scopic Regimes
The reproduction of knowledge in the visual field of perception has historical, theoretical and pragmatic significance for information science. Its areas of application are in the corporate and academic spheres and in the context of global sharing of information. The proponents of the visual approach assume intuitive ease of use, the boundary-spanning facility, and powerful data-representation capabilities inherent in visual approach. Yet, there is a naivete in assuming that the complications of language and culture could vanish in the face of information landscapes, maps of meaning, and sophisticated interfaces intuitively understood. This panel examines the complexities of the visual that are framed by the cultural, examining visual literacy, scopic regimes and the debates surrounding visual representation of knowledge in a historical perspective. The panelists focus on scopic regimes that contain and shape visual forms and on the environments of such containment. The representational spaces encompass representations of artifacts in a virtual museum, the representations of statistical information circulated in popular print and theoretical interpretation of the problem of cultural and aesthetic containment of the work of art in the representational space of the museum. The panel examines how technologies of reproduction run parallel to an increasing objectification of knowledge, and universalizing the works or knowledge through categories offered by educational, cultural and political institutions. It also examines tensions between the attempt to build and institutionally enforce cultural knowledge and the productive resistances of the work in its production, distribution, and reception, thus reflecting how practices of cultural transmission are incorporated in the process of reproduction of knowledge.
The revival of the concept of documents in the theoretical foundation of information science
Jack Andersen (Royal School of LIS, Copenhagen) Michael Buckland (U. California, Berkeley) Birger Hjørland (Royal School of LIS, Copenhagen)
Presented at
ASIST 2003 Annual Meeting -- Humanizing Information Technology: From Ideas to Bits and Back (ASIST AM 03 2003), Westin Long Beach, Long Beach, California, October 20 - 23, 2003
Abstract
In this session, we will examine the concept of ”document” as it is used in library and information science. The range of conceptions of documents will be critically reviewed; the necessity and artificiality of these conceptions will be explored; and their utility for information retrieval in different domains will be evaluated. [SPONSORED BY SIG-HFIS]
Classification Across Disciplines: The Same, Only Different
Shawne Miksa, University of North Texas - Moderator and Organizer; Barbara Kwasnik, Syracuse University; Francis Miksa, University of Texas at Austin; David Crabbe, Cycorp, Inc.
Presented at
ASIST 2003 Annual Meeting -- Humanizing Information Technology: From Ideas to Bits and Back (ASIST AM 03 2003), Westin Long Beach, Long Beach, California, October 20 - 23, 2003
Abstract
Co-Sponsored by SIGs CR, HFIS.
This session seeks to bridge the recognized gap between information science understandings of classification and the applications of classification techniques in various disciplines and the corporate world. Classification experts in the information sciences are challenged to look at classification from several perspectives: how do we serve different disciplines in the arts and sciences, whose discourse traditions vary?; what can we learn from the understandings of classification as it is used implicitly and explicitly to organize information in other fields?; and, from a corporate case, on the way an artificial intelligence technology approaches the problem of knowledge representation and classification.