The Occasional Informationist

Physical plus digital, but more physical than you might think

dbawden — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 22:33:55 +0000

Until quite recently, the world of recorded information was physical: print-on-paper, plus the paper card ‘machinery’ well described by Marcus Krajewski’s book Paper Machines. Mechanised documentation – punched cards, edge-notched cards, and the like – added some automation, but were still very much physical objects. Then the information world became a bit digital, with computer databases and online searching, and then very digital, with the internet and all that flowed from it. And at the same time, the rest of the world of documents, in the broadest sense, and collectable things – books, music, photographs, movies, art and museum objects – also became partly of wholly digital.

And so we became accustomed to the idea of a hybrid information world, and perhaps a hybrid world in general, a world of ‘physical plus digital’. And there seemed to be an assumption that the world, or at least the information and communication parts of it, was moving inexorably towards an all-digital condition.

Well, perhaps not. There has always been a realization among those who study these things, and – perhaps ironically – among those who are best versed in digital matters, that we are likely to end up with a balance. I recall seeing, quiet a few years ago, an exhibition mounted by Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company who made their name with their work on the first Star Wars films. One of the exhibition’s tag lines was ‘Digital plus Physical equals the Future’. I recall thinking at the time that they ought to know,

And now Embracing Analog, a report from JWT Intelligence, a division of J Walter Thompson the best-known advertising agency in the world, looks at the issue afresh. The report, by the way, was brought to my attention by one of more informative tweeters, Lena Rowland.

Frank Rose

In true adman style, the report’s subtitle tells us that “physical is hot”. Its author, Frank Rose, finds that although there is still enthusiasm for digital, in many aspects of life people are seeking out, and valuing, physical equivalents. While speed, convenience and low cost are powerful motivators for seeking digital materials, physical items have an emotional resonance, an authenticity, and a pleasing imperfection, which is driving increased purchases of physical books, music, pictures and films, and even writing paper and traditional-style wristwatches. We are aware of the resurgence of vinyl records, but Rose reminds us that even cassette tapes are making something of a come back.

Quite what this means for the communication of information, and the concerns of information specialists, is not easy to tell. Certainly not a return to library stacks of printed journals, nor to card catalogues. But we should not assume that the information world, any more than any other part of the world, is going to be inexorably all-digital; the digital-plus-physical balance is likely to be more subtle than that. And much more interesting.

Imagination, exciting mixes and the improvement of information research

dbawden — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:42:38 +0000

Paul Sturges

“It is my contention”, writes Paul Sturges in a recent article on imagination in LIS research’, “that much of LIS research at all levels, throughout the world, is dull formulaic and often disgracefully bad”. This is bad for research, of course, but “given that LIS is a practical discipline, it is something of a professional disaster. The great virtue of LIS research is that first it deals with issues that are both fundamental (how human beings interface with information of all kinds) and immediate and urgent (the effectiveness of technologies and systems). Its second strength is that the LIS research literature addresses communities of practitioners – people who look to it for guidance in their professional lives. LIS researchers can make a difference much more than can their fellow researchers in predominantly academic disciplines”. Finally, he adds that “the almost universal lack of inspiration is depressing”. Coming from someone with many years experience as a library/information educator and researcher, an activist in the cause of freedom of access to information, and a member of the Order of the British Empire no less, these thoughts have to be taken seriously.

LIS research meets HMQ: OBE investiture

It is some consolation to me, as editor of Journal of Documentation, that Paul (himself an editorial board member) excludes this journal from the worst of his criticism, allowing that “Journal of Documentation, for instance, consistently publishes an exciting mix of material with many different approaches to LIS”. Nonetheless, his criticisms will give pause for thought to anyone involved in library/information research or education, or who cares about the relation between research and practice in our subject.

His basic contention is that much information research lacks imagination, which he associates with openness, unpredictability, making connections, exploring unlikely looking possibilities, and a willingness to stretch, or even break, norms and rules. What it not suffice is “hard work [and] the following of a set of rules obtained from a textbook on research technique”; there is sometimes “such a slavish respect for rules and conventions that excellent work is sadly predictable”.

These trenchant criticisms are expanded and exemplified by analysis of five aspects of the LIS research literature. There is a disappointing lack of imagination and ambition in the topics chosen: students choosing dissertation topics, in particular, are all too often “frighteningly conventional”. Whenever possible, a researcher should ask “is there a question I really want to answer?” and use this as a basis for topic choice. Theory is sometimes wrongly used or over-used, and can lead to unnecessary obscurity; research results should be accessible to a wide audience, though this is certainly not a reason for avoiding theories and models. Research should be grounded in a wide reading of the literature, and not only the library/information literature. Imagination is needed in the choice of appropriate methods; the over-use of questionnaire surveys in information research amounts to a form of “slavery”. And findings need to go beyond an identification of what is interesting, to show what is significant, and why. This involves time and imagination, both of which may be short as deadlines for the end of the research approach.

This splendid article should be made compulsory reading for all novice researchers, especially for students embarking on masters dissertations and doctoral theses, and also for jaded old hands. As for Journal of Documentation, we will try to live up to Paul’s commendation, and continue with as much of a novel and imagination mix of material as we can.

The declining impact of the impact factor?

dbawden — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 17:11:56 +0000

This is an amended version of an editorial to be published in Journal of Documentation.

Impact factors have been, for quite a few years now, the single metric most closely associated with the ‘quality’ of an academic journal, or similar dissemination mechanism. This simple, perhaps simplistic, measure has been receiving an increasing level of criticism recently, of which an interesting example is a study by George Lazano, Vincent Larivière, and Yves Gingras, published in Joural of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, showing that the proportion of highly cited papers coming from high-impact journals is steadily decreasing. A main reason for this seems to be the increasing tendency for readers to find articles through search engines, rather than through the tables of contents and indexes of individual journals, severing the close link between perceived quality of articles and of journals. This study has received a good deal of publicity; see, for example, the article by Dan Cossins in The Scientist newsletter.

There are a number of things to be said about this, from the perspective of a scholarly journal such as Journal of Documentation (which I have the pleasure of editing). First and foremost, we have always be wary about choosing a single metric as the measure of how well a journal is doing; there are other, and arguably equally or more relevant measures. One such, produced from the same dataset as the impact factor, is a journal’s ‘half-life’; a measure of the length of time for which its material remains useful and used. JDoc has always had a very long half-life, equal to that of the major review journals of the field, something in which we have taken great satisfaction.

There are also new metrics, appearing as scholarly communication becomes an increasingly digital business, often referred to under the label of altmetrics. The most obvious of these, though by no means the only one, is the number of downloads of articles. While by no means the same as an impact factor, this is an alternative, and arguably an equally, if not more, valid, way of assessing a journal’s ‘reach’ and influence.

The most dramatic possibility, of course, hinted at by many of these new developments, is that the academic journal itself will undergo far-reaching change, as the viability of an information dissemination system developed to be produced in a convenient print-on-paper package is tested in an information environment which is not merely digital, but increasingly interactive and decentralized. Volumes, issues and pages, essential concepts for print journals, cease to have much meaning in the digital environment, and possibilities for interaction vastly exceed older ideas of errata and letters to the editor. It may that the effect of these changes will turn out to be so major for the scholarly journal, that the issue of the impact factor will come to be seen as entirely insignificant.

Thomas Jefferson, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and information history for the future

dbawden — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 13:24:51 +0000

I gave a talk to a meeting of CILIP’s Library and Information History group, which was celebrating its 50th anniversary. It was a short and informal presentation, which – as it was US election day – had a presidential theme, and looked at some reasons why library and information history is worthwhile as a subject for study. This is a summary of the main points.

Thomas Jefferson, the third president, wrote that “”I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past”. This reflects what is quite a common viewpoint among students and practitioners of the information sciences: why should we study the history of our subjects, when we could be focusing on advances in technology and in society, and where they will take us in the future.

Prediction of the future, even the near future, is difficult for the information sciences, due to the dramatic and transformational changes brought about by advances in technology. We are all familiar with Moore’s Law, which – though it can be expressed in different ways – points to the exponentially increasing power of computers.

And we know of the dramatic prophecies of gurus such as Ray Kurzweil, of a ‘singularity’, a few decades off, when the capabilities of computers will outstrip our ability to understand what they are doing, still less to control them.

This situation, when technology advances so fast that our ideas of how best to use it are always lagging behind, is problematic but not unprecedented; there have been other periods in history when imagination, rather than detailed realistic planning, was needed to cope with the speed of technological advance.

The first train enters Trieste station

In the 1840s, the Austro-Hungarian Empire planned for a railway line between Vienna and the nearest seaport, Trieste , now in Italy. However, whatever route was chosen for the line, and whatever tunnels and viaducts might be made, stretches of the line would still have too steep a gradient for any current or foreseeable locomotive. The Emperor, Franz Joseph 1, nonetheless ordered that the line built, expressing the faith that by the time it was finished, there would be engines able to work it. And so it proved, and the line opened in July 1857.

Coins commemorating the opening of the Trieste line

Perhaps there is a lesson, or at least an analogy here. When planning information systems and services, we should focus on what we want them to do, assuming that the technology will be there to support our ideas.

But how do we know what to do? Our best guide should be what we know about information and documents and collections; and how people like to use them. Technologies change rapidly and dramatically, but human thought, and social interaction, and information behaviour in general terms, does not. And we have several centuries of a printed information environment, and several millennia of use of recorded information, from which to draw lessons. This is not an advocacy for the drawing of shallow analogies, or fatuous claims that nothing ever really changes; rather it is an argument for seeing repeating lessons in how humans deal with information and knowledge, independent of technology. Information history is a very good teacher about the information future.

So this is one, rather pragmatic reason, for studying information history. It gives a good response to those who think like Thomas Jefferson. It is by no means the only reason, nor necessarily the most important. And it absolutely does not mean a passive attitude towards considering the future of our discipline and profession. In the words of the forty-second president, Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him”

Knowledge, documents and a London location

dbawden — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 08:17:42 +0000

As documents, and the whole information and communication environment, become increasingly digital, it is natural to assume that physical location becomes of less importance. Two newly published books remind us that this idea should be examined with a critical eye.

Rosemary Ashton’s Victorian Bloomsbury, a splendidly scholarly and well-produced intellectual and cultural history of that London district, gives a very convincing account of how the “March of Mind” occurred in a very specific locale over a relatively short time period. This is the story of how Bloomsbury became London’s “intellectual workshop” long before the Bloomsbury Group entered its squares and terraces.
Naturally, the foundation of University College London is in many ways the focal point of the story, but Ashton covers much more besides, focusing on a number of institutions centred on documents and collections.

UCL in its early days

The British Museum, with its library, is another major topic, with a lively account of the career of Pannizzi, whom Ashton categorises as “a force of nature, bringing is enormous energy to the task of making the … library one of the best in the world” (p. 148). Many publishers set up home in Bloomsbury, most notably the splendidly-named Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Hospitals, with their associated libraries, anatomy and pathology museums, and publishing ventures also flourished, as did institutions promoting the education of women and the working classes. There is much else in the book to commend it to anyone interested in Victorian intellectual life, or in the history of London generally. But documents and collections, and the interactions of those who used them are at the heart of this account of what Ashton reminds us is still “the heart of intellectual London, with more libraries, museums and educational establishments than any other part of the city” (p 319).

The Museum Tavern today

The social institutions which promoted this interaction are also covered, most notably the Museum Tavern, a regular meeting place for those who frequented the Reading Room.
The British Library, which grew from the library of the British Museum is now on the wrong side of the Euston Road to count as being in Bloomsbury by physical location, though it is certainly still there in spirit. Michael Leapman’s Book of the British Library, while on an academic text in the same sense as Ashton’s, gives a well-researched and informative account of the Library’s origins and of its current status and issues. It is so well-produced and profusely and beautifully illustrated, that some may dismiss it as a “coffee table book”. This would be a mistake. A serious student would learn much from this book, though certainly the pleasure in reading it might disguise the fact.

The Bloomsbury origins of the Library are well-described and illustrated; particularly gripping is the long-running feud between Pannizzi, Keeper of Manscripts, and Frederick Madden, Keeper of Manuscripts, and technically Pannizzi’s junior. The enjoyment of the blow-by-blow account of their disputes, culminating in Madden’s complaint that Pannizzi was to blame for Madden’s cat being locked in the Museum basement for two days, is one of the guilty pleasures of reading this book.

These two books join a small number which has analysed and celebrated the history of intellectual advances in London. We might also mention James Hamilton’s London Lights, a popular account of developments in the early nineteenth century, focusing on the generation and communication of knowledge generally, including factors such as libraries, learned societies, museums, printing, lithography, and photography.

Studying the history of information, and its collection and dissemination, in local contexts is worthwhile in itself. But books of this kind remind us that a physical place, a locality, has sometimes been a very powerful stimulus to the development of collections, of memory institutions, and of the advances in education and dissemination of knowledge which are associated with them. This is worth remembering as we move into a digital information world.

Waxing and waning, but hopefully mostly waxing

dbawden — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 14:45:00 +0000

Blaise Cronin presents an interesting and insightful article in the latest issue of Information Research on the waxing and waning of a field; reflections on information studies education. It is the latest contribution to a very long debate, going back over three decades, as to whether library / information science has a good future, as an academic discipline and profession; for other interesting examples, see an article by Tom Wilson, and the papers in the book edited by Alan Gilchrist. Cronin’s presentation gives, among other things, a neat potted history of the discipline, and an informed assessment of some aspects of its present state.

However, unlike some of the other contributions on this topic, it is based on some solid evidence. Cronin has been among those who have studied the way in which LIS imports and exports knowledge, to and from other academic disciplines. Here he summarises evidence which show that over recent years LIS research is being cited more outside the field than within it, as other academic disciplines make use of its research findings. LIS is becoming less introverted and self-referential.

Unmitigated good news one might think. But Cronin points out some systemic weaknesses in LIS as a research-based discipline. Its ‘methodological heterogeneity’, i.e. its cheerful use of methods and concepts from a variety of other disciplines, while an obvious strength in some respects, is also a weakness. It leads to an accumulation of isolated findings, rather than to generalizations, and a solid base of disciplinary theory. Cronin terms this ‘epistemic promiscuity’, and warns that it comes at a price; LIS’s sense of identity as an academic discipline, already rather weak, will decrease still further. The information studies field, says Cronin, is increasingly fluid and permeable.

One consequence of this is that LIS has never had a natural home within academia. Indeed, a study of European LIS departments carried out a few years ago showed them located in almost all parts of the academic universe: faculties of science, of social science, and of humanities, business schools, and schools of computing and informatics. Cronin also alludes to a recent rash of restructuring and reorganization affecting academic departments of LIS which he has personal knowledge, and to equivalent changes affecting information pratitioners.

Unlike other more pessimistic commentators, Cronin takes a view which is by no means negative overall; while some parts of the field will wane, he points out, others will wax. This seems to me to a sensible assessment, and one which should give us cause for optimism. These sort of concerns are far from new, and, I think, an inescapable consequence of the nature of the information sciences as academic disciplines. If, as I believe, library / information science is best regarded as a ‘field of study’, focused on the very broad topic of information as its subject matter, then its permeability to other fields is inevitable; indeed is right and proper. And if, as my colleague Lyn Robinson has argued, the proper subject of study of information science is the whole communication chain of recorded information, then we will naturally overlap with all the other disciplines who have some interest in this, from computer science to psychology, and from sociology to publishing. This is arguably a wider list of overlapping interests than most, if not any, other subjects; not for nothing has information science sometimes been called a meta-science.

On this basis, I see a lot to be optimistic about, given what Blaise Cronin concludes about the increasing recognition of LIS insights and results by other disciplines. Like him, I see the field waxing and waning over the years, to a different extent in different parts of the discipline, and perhaps also in different parts of the world. But I am confident enough to believe that there will be, on the whole, more waxing than waning. What matters is not trying to hold on to some rigid and permanent core of the subject, and try to keep others away from it; what matter is rather to ensure that its insights cross its increasingly fluid boundaries.

Library Science lecturer job at City University London

dbawden — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:20:30 +0000

Some good news (for a change, maybe) in the academic library/information world. We are recruiting a new staff member in the Centre for Information Science, City University London. Full-time, permanent position, intended for a fairly new entrant to academic life; looking for someone to do a mix of teaching, course development, research, publication, and professional liaison.

Some information is given below, with a link to the formal advertisment on the University’s web site. For anyone who was quick off the mark and looked at it already, please be aware that (in a commendable effort to meet a deadline) our HR people initially put up a fairly generic set of information, which has now been enhanced.

Please contact Lyn or myself, if you might be interesting in working with us.

————————————————————–

City University London has been a centre of excellence for research and teaching in library and information science for over 50 years. As part of the University’s strategy to develop academic excellence for business and the professions, we now wish to appoint a Lecturer in Library Science. The new lecturer will work alongside David Bawden and Lyn Robinson in City’s Centre for Information Science, teaching on our Masters programmes in Information Science, Library Science and Information Management in the Cultural Sector, and being actively engaged in research and publication.

This is a post for an early-career academic, with a good level of academic maturity and independence. Applicants should hold a PhD in a relevant subject area, and have at least four significant publications in peer-reviewed journals. Relevant professional experience, and experience of teaching in higher education, would be advantageous. Areas of expertise of particular interest are: GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) sector issues; collection management; culture and heritage information and informatics; digital humanities; social informatics; and publishing.

For an informal discussion, please contact David Bawden (db@soi.city.ac.uk) or Lyn Robinson (lyn@soi.city.ac.uk).

Formal information, including application procedure, can be found aton the City University job pages.

The closing date is 28 September.

On the teaching of cataloguing

dbawden — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 17:58:50 +0000

Few things have raised as much controversy in the normally quiet world of library/education as how, and why, we teach cataloguing. On the one side are those who mourn the decline of teaching of traditional style ‘cat and class’, fearing that we are denying our students one of the few undeniably unique skills of the information professions. On the other are those who see the subject as obsessed with minutiae, and having more than a whiff of the nineteenth century, and who applaud what they see as the positive and sensible integration of these topics into wider presentation of metadata and resource description.

So, especially as we are often asked about this by potential students, it seemed a good idea to set out briefly how, and why, we teach these subjects in the library/information courses at City University London.

Our approach is not primarily dictated by our views of cataloguing and associated issues per se; although, if pressed, we would probably have more sympathy with the latter of the above approaches. Rather, we start from the purpose of our courses: to provide an introduction to an academic subject, such that out students can go on to careers in a variety of professional settings, rather than to provide vocational skills training for a narrow career path. Also, we emphasise principles and concepts, to give a foundation to be built on through workplace training and experience, professional development and lifelong learning.

It is then fairly obvious that we take the view that, while it is essential that students gain an awareness of the principles of cataloguing and of resource description generally, it is not appropriate to include detailed instruction in any specific system or format. Partly this reflects the changing nature of library/information work: as Cristina Patuelli says in a 2010 paper in Journal of Information Science:“While cataloguing competencies remain central to the profession, traditional cataloguing duties, however they are defined, are less central to the organisation … the mission and duties of cataloguers have become increasing ambiguous”. Detailed cataloguing rules, originating in the world of print, must adapt to the new metadata world, an idea which a blog post by James Weinheimer examines.

Partly, our view also reflects that fact that the practical competences of traditional cataloguing, though still a relevant set of professional skills for some contexts and circumstances, are not really the stuff of Masters level education: as Maurice Line put, in typically robust fashion, “Cataloguers would lose much of their status if it were shown that most cataloguing is a trivial job easily done by clerical staff”.

And finally it reflects that fact that we have another institution in London providing a very through treatment of these issues in its Masters courses; we feel it more productive to offer an alternative approach.

So our approach emphasizes principles and concepts, rather than details and practices. We do not ignore the history: far from it, modern metadata cannot be understood fully without knowing something of Panizzi, Cutter, the Paris Principles and the rest. But we focus on the much wider contexts of modern resource description. Nor do we stick to theoretical principles; these cannot be understood without some clear examples. But we do not feel it appropriate to devote over-much time in a crowded course to extensive practice of skills which, in detail, will only benefit a small proportion of students for a relatively short period of time. Moreover, we do not attempt to treat cataloguing, or even ‘cat and class’, as an isolated topic, but rather to set it in the wider context of how we understand documents and information resources, and then how we represent and describe them.

This ‘principles not details’ approach is supported by the views of many employers, such as those expressed in articles in the Spring 2007 issue of Catalogue and Index. For example, Heather Jardine of the City of London libraries: “What [I want] is an intelligent candidate who understands the principles of cataloguing and indexing, and to whom I can therefore easily explain the ways in which we choose to apply them in our own situation”. And Alan Danskin of the British Library: “ What is needed is a principles based approach that looks at resource discovery holistically. Cataloguing has too often been concerned with the minutiae of the inputs … The curriculum should equip the student with the knowledge to ask the right questions about the resource they are cataloguing or the discovery system they are using.” We also persuaded a Masters student to do a dissertation surveying some of these issues, later published as a journal article.

So, we believe that we are providing, as best as we can within the confines of a one-year course, what a majority of students and of employers want in the treatment of this rather contentious subject. Of course – as with any topic on a postgraduate course – some students want to go beyond the basic provision; to look in more detail at specific cataloguing tools and codes, and to gain practice in their use. This they do through choice of assignments, electives and dissertation, and by general self-study. One positive effect of the diminution of formal cataloguing courses has been the advent of resources aimed at helping interesting students build on an introduction to basic principles. One example, which we enthusiastically recommend to our students is the excellent textbook by Anne Welsh and Sue Batley, which specifically aims to complement a ‘basic principles’ course.

Anyone interested in the City approach to teaching these subjects will find more details in a journal article and in our course brochure.

Dr Nicholson and his metabolic maps

dbawden — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:33:12 +0000

Many years ago, in another life, while I was studying organic chemistry, my eyes often wandered to the colourful and complicated maps of biochemical pathways which often hung in lecture rooms and laboratories. I’m sorry to say that I paid them little attention, other than to reflect that I was lucky to have avoided the study of much biochemistry. As I became interested in later years in the representation of scientific information, I came to a vague realisation of how effective these maps were in conveying a great variety of complex concepts and relationships in a pleasing and relatively easily assimilated manner. I certainly did not realize how much they owed to one individual, Donald Nicholson, who died in May this year. His life and work is described in a obituary from Leeds University.

Nicholson, for most of his life an academic in the department of microbiology at Leeds, developed his first maps in 1950s, trying to display the sequences of chemical reactions involved in metabolic processes which were being identified in increasing numbers, and continued his work for over 50 years. His charts are certainly among the earliest examples of what would now be called visualisation, and are among the best known graphical representations of scientific data. More than a million copies have been produced in 22 editions, now joined by a variety of smaller ‘minimaps’ and computerized ‘animaps’. Interestingly, they were first produced commercially by the same company responsible for Harry Beck’s London Underground map, an equivalent well-known and helpful diagram in a very different domain.

Full details of Nicholson’s work, with many examples of his maps, can be found on his website, mainlined by the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Even for those with no desire to learn more about biochemistry, they are well worth investigating as a classic, even iconic if you like the word, information product.

Why Norbert Wiener was plaintive, and would have hated the REF exercise

dbawden — Tue, 29 May 2012 15:52:39 +0000

Norbert Wiener

I was recently re-reading parts of Norbert Wiener’s autobiography, I am a mathematician, shortly after writing a brief account of theories of information for our upcoming book Introduction to Information Science. What caught my attention was how the lives and work of the proponents of what has been come to be known as information theory were inter-meshed during the late 1930s and 1940s. Wiener, who worked virtially all his life at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is best known today as the originator of the idea of cybernetics, describes this vividly.

Claude Shannon

He teaches a young Claude Shannon at MIT, but has relatively little contact with him at that stage. He collaborates with Vannevar Bush, the originator of the Memex concept, on the early development of computing, though Bush favours analogue approaches while Wiener espouses digital computing. He is assigned to work for Warren Weaver, who popularised Shannon’s theory, on a wartime project, and consults with John von Neumann, the designer of modern computer architecture, about it.

Vannevar Bush

Although it has always been clear that the mathematical formulations of information theory, or communication theory as Shannon originally termed it, were about a meaning-free conception of information, it is interesting to see just how much this is so.

John von Neumann

Wiener tells the story as essentially one about two forms of electrical engineering: power engineering and communications engineering. The theory of the latter, also termed the theory of strong currents, led to the formulation of a quantitative measure of information. But this was in way associated with information in the sense used by the sciences of the human record, until Warren Weaver speculated that Shannon’s theory might have much wider applicability. Until then, it was a matter of study the quality of transmission across noisy channels, the representation of formal logic in electric circuits, and the control of complex machinery.

Warren Weaver

The protagonists approached the topic from different directions and for different purposes: Shannon seeking to finds ways to optimise accurate message transmission, and Wiener examining ways to improve the aiming of anti-aircraft guns. But both found the need to formally define a fundamental unit of information, as essentially a yes/no decision, and both reached essentially the same formalism.

Wiener seems to have resented the way which information theory was, even at the time he wrote, beginning to be termed Shannon theory, or Shannon-Weaver theory. Rather plaintively, he terms it ‘Shannon-Wiener’ theory, and insists that “it belongs to both of us equally”. That is not how history recalls it. Nor is there much explicit recognition, apart from occasional passing comments, of the striking difference made a minus sign in the otherwise identical formulations of Shannon and Wiener. For Shannon, information is randomness, variety, disorganisation; for Wiener it is order and pattern; what later authors would call ‘negentropy’. The results of calculations are the same; but what we understand information to be is drastically different.

Perhaps this is of no consequence at this distance in time. But perhaps, when debates can still rage about the validity and relevance of an objective view of information (the debate between Marcia Bates and Birger Hjørland in recent years in the pages of the LIS literature is an excellent example), it may be worth reminding ourselves what the original protagonists thought.

Wiener also vehemently believed that science and scholarship must be long-term, and not tied to short term gains. Scholars must be free to follow their interests, and need adequate leisure time, and a lack of pressure to develop them. He has a provocative thought for those who wish to assess all academic work by its short-term results. Institutions such as universities, he writes “cannot and do not ask for an immediate translation of their hopes and ideals into the small change of the present day. They exist on faith, the faith that the development of knowledge is a good thing and must ultimately conspire in the good of all men”. Too liberal, perhaps, for the impact-focused evaluation of research which are so in vogue at present, such a our own dear REF exercise, but something else worth pondering across the years.