Aslib was, from 1924 to 2010, an independent membership organisation for special librarianship, technical and commercial information work, and latterly for information management, It was highly influential in the development of documentation and information science, in the UK and worldwide. Its activities included research and consultancy, training, professional development, publishing, and technology development. Aslib was… Continue reading Plus ça change in information research; or the modernity of older studies
Author: dbawden
Remembering Sir Joseph: the Paxton150 conference
I attended Paxton150, a conference to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Sir Joseph Paxton, last week. Organised by the Department of Landscape at Sheffield University, this meeting both looked back at the history of public parks, and the influence of Paxton and his followers on their development, and also examined their future,… Continue reading Remembering Sir Joseph: the Paxton150 conference
Albert’s imagination and the significance of information
The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination (Albert Einstein) As you no doubt know, this year marks the hundredth anniversary of Einstein’s theory of general relativity, first presented by him in 1915 to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Even among physics enthusiasts, general relativity has a daunting reputation, largely because of its… Continue reading Albert’s imagination and the significance of information
i3 in the Grey City
i3 – Information: interactions and impact – is a conference held at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen every two years. This year’s conference was held in late June, the fifth in the series, and the first I’d had a chance to go to. Located in the Aberdeen Business School, the conference venue gave a chance… Continue reading i3 in the Grey City
On not being a weak discipline
I attended the ISI conference in Zadar earlier this year, as co-author of a paper on the relation between library and information science (LIS) and the digital humanities, which my colleague Lyn Robinson has blogged about. I found myself involved in a panel discussion on the state of information science research, in which some of… Continue reading On not being a weak discipline
In praise of dissertations
At this time of year, when our #citylis Masters students are just embarking on their dissertation projects at City University London, it seems apposite to reflect on what an interesting set of dissertations our students do each year, and what a contribution this aspect of the course makes to the professional knowledge base. While this… Continue reading In praise of dissertations
On not going to library school
My colleague @lynrobinson has written an intriguing blog post on the theme of Don’t go to library school: you won’t learn anything useful. In part this is a response to Deanna Marcum’s thought-provoking report Educating the research librarian: are we falling short?. While I don’t have anything to add to Lyn’s account of how we… Continue reading On not going to library school
The Janus face of documentation
Documents are generally agreed to be one of the main foci, in not the main focus, of interest for the information sciences, since the ideas of documentation were first developed by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. We have recently seen a revival of interest in document theory, through the insights of scholars such as… Continue reading The Janus face of documentation
LIS research and practice; still opponents?
This post is based on my reflections on a talk I gave last summer at the iFutures 2014 conference at Sheffield University, and on responses to that talk. Ten years ago, in an editorial in Journal of Documentation, I commented on the gap between research and practice in the information sciences, which has been lamented… Continue reading LIS research and practice; still opponents?
On being a bang-for-buck hero
Being still February, it is a bit early for even the most shameless shops and restaurants to begin their Christmas promotions. No such reticence for British academia, as, with the dust barely settled on REF2014, universities begin to plan for REF2020. As my own university joins in this trend, I stave off angst by meditating… Continue reading On being a bang-for-buck hero
The Occasional Informationist 