Yes, I should have done it a year ago, 25 years after the first post on the Occasional Informationist blog was made on 4th April 2009. Ah well, better late than never, for a reflection of sorts. In particular, a reflection on why keep a blog like this going. After all, we are assured that… Continue reading Silver plus one
Category: documents, books, libraries, collections
London and the 17th century
I have never really liked the seventeenth century; maybe after having to study it at school, seemingly interminably. Rather too much plague, fire, civil war, religious persecution, and Dutchmen doing bad things on the Medway. Yes, of course, Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton, but even so. Sometimes, however, reading a single book can change one's… Continue reading London and the 17th century
Libraries of Science at the Royal Society
An interesting meeting with a full-house audience in the opulent surroundings of the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace last week (14th March 2025). 'Libraries of Science' is an apt enough title, although the topics covered were mostly more specific. Talks focused mainly on aspects of the libraries of British learned and societies, from Antiquaries… Continue reading Libraries of Science at the Royal Society
Content in an age of GenAI: Floridi on implications and directions
Readers of this blog will know that I regard Luciano Floridi as one of the more insightful guides to the conceptual issues of a rapidly changing information environment, and his philosophy of information as a valuable basis for library/information science. In an open access editorial in Philosophy and Technology (31st August 2024), Floridi explores the… Continue reading Content in an age of GenAI: Floridi on implications and directions
Lund on Documentation
Of making many books there is no end, as the writer of Ecclesiates reminds us, but occasionally a very worthwhile new one comes along. So it's a real pleasure to see Niels Windfield Lund's new book Introduction to Documentation Studies (Facet, 2024). [Full disclosure: the foreword is written by Lyn Robinson and myself.] Lund… Continue reading Lund on Documentation
Overload, attention and medieval diagrams
Information overload, and its attendant pathologies of information, wrongly thought to be a product of the digital age, of social media, and the like, have received much comment in recent years. With attention focused on the ways in which the digital environment removes many of the informational frictions in the communication chain, the long history… Continue reading Overload, attention and medieval diagrams
Rocking documentation redux: rock value
In a post of some years back, I mused on how rocks and minerals could be regarded as documents, conveying information, and as informational entities in their own right, and drew attention to the way in which their documentary/informational status had been discussed by a variety of thinkers, from Suzanne Briet to Luciano Floridi. Some… Continue reading Rocking documentation redux: rock value
Indexes (and quite a bit besides), history of
In this history of indexes and indexing, Dennis Duncan offers a scholarly, but very readable, mix of information history, literature, information science, and the history of books and reading. To someone, like myself, whose ideas of indexes has revolved around the likes of Index Medicus and Chemical Abstracts, the ideas of satirical indexes, indexes as… Continue reading Indexes (and quite a bit besides), history of
Documentation and the museum object
A rather sad post for the first one after a break. CityLIS PhD student Christopher Serbutt sadly died last year, after a long period of ill-health, so that there was a posthumous award. Titled The changing place of information: an examination and evaluation of how the context in which an object is set affects the… Continue reading Documentation and the museum object
Remembering Mr. Kemp: Gardening in a ‘book-making age’
I have a long-standing interest in the Victorian information environment, which is many ways still influences our own. In particular, I have been fascinated by how information-rich was the world of botany, horticulture and the design of parks and gardens in that period. Several of the leading garden designers were also prolific authors and editors,… Continue reading Remembering Mr. Kemp: Gardening in a ‘book-making age’
The Occasional Informationist 