I am a Professor of Information Science, formerly at the Department of Library and Information Science at City, University of London. Presently Honorary Lecturer and PhD supervisor at University College London and the University of Ljubljana.
My interests in information science and documentation include theories and philosophies of information, information behaviour and digital literacy – in particular information for creativity and for the development of understanding – and aspects of knowledge organisation and of information history. See my academic and professional page for more details.
I am editor of Journal of Documentation, the leading European journal of library/information science, editorial board member for Knjižnica, and for MDPI’s open access journal Information and open post-publication peer-review journal Sci, co-author of Facet’s best-selling textbook Introduction to Information Science (second edition, 2022) and of the open access monograph Open Access in Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2020), and a member of the international advisory board for the Conceptions of Library and Information Science (CoLIS) conferences.
My blog is used mainly for short and informal comments on topics within my academic interests, with a few pieces on London; the blog category list will give an indication of what to expect. Posting is occasional, rather than regular or frequent, as befits the title,
Latest publications
D Bawden and L Robinson. Open Science roles for libraries; international perspectives and examples. Knjižnica: revija za področje bibliotekarstva in informacijske znanosti, 2024, in press.
S Dodd and D Bawden, Stories Not Statistics: A Qualitative Narrative Exploration of the Value of Public Libraries in the United Kingdom. The Library Quarterly, 2024, 94(2), 159-179.
Julian Barbour: timeless complexity and the records of the universe [blog post, March 2024]
Foreword to Introduction to Documentation Studies, N.W. Lund, Facet, 2024, pp xvii-xix
The continuing influence of Mark Burgin [blog post, Deceber 2023]
T Mason and D Bawden, Times New Plural – The multiple temporalities of contemporary life and the infosphere Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2023, 74(10), 1159-1169. Translation in Information Matters.
The Occasional Informationist 