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… Continue reading Waxing and waning, but hopefully mostly waxing
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Library Science lecturer job at City University London
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… Continue reading Library Science lecturer job at City University London
On the teaching of cataloguing
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… Continue reading On the teaching of cataloguing
Dr Nicholson and his metabolic maps
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… Continue reading Dr Nicholson and his metabolic maps
Why Norbert Wiener was plaintive, and would have hated the REF exercise
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… Continue reading Why Norbert Wiener was plaintive, and would have hated the REF exercise
London (and Aslib) old and new
While leading a course for Aslib last week at the Etc. venues training centre near the Tower of London last week, I was struck by the view out of the window; which, I'm glad to say, the participants were polite enough not to stare at. In the foreground, Robert Smirke's Royal Mint building of 1809,… Continue reading London (and Aslib) old and new
Delete Docklands, insert Victoria
I imagine that anyone thinking of visiting London this year will be thinking of the Olympics, the Diamond Jubilee and so on, and that the Online Conference will be rather low down the list of must-sees. But for anyone who did have it as a priority, I have inadvertently misled you in a previous post.… Continue reading Delete Docklands, insert Victoria
Emergence, novices, and all things new
The rather sudden arrival of spring leads one (well, leads me), naturally enough, to think of new things and emerging entities, and their information needs and consequences. Most obviously we might think of providing the knowledge needed by learners, at all stages and in any subject or topic, and of the need for those learners… Continue reading Emergence, novices, and all things new
Alas for the paperless office. Weep for the fragile archive.
Farewell, obscure objects of desire, an article by Matthew Reisz in the Times Higher (19th January 2012) reports a British Academy conference on open access academic publishing. It attributes some interesting views to Alice Prochaska, principal of Somerville College, Oxford, who notes that libraries and archives have invested huge resources in digitisation projects to make… Continue reading Alas for the paperless office. Weep for the fragile archive.
Fads, assimilations and knowledge management
While writing a review for Aslib Proceedings of a new text on knowledge management, Kevin C. Desouza and Scott Paquette's Knowledge Management: an introduction, I commented that there was a bit of a contradiction in the way that the book addresses Tom Wilson's criticism – in his 2002 paper, The nonsense of knowledge management -… Continue reading Fads, assimilations and knowledge management
The Occasional Informationist 