Musing on the continuing place of language issues in both research and practice in the information sciences, following my participation in the Zagreb InFuture meeting, I wrote an editorial on the topic for the Journal of Documentation. This post is an amended version. Languages, in one guise or another, have been a constant feature of… Continue reading Documenting Babel – languages in information science
Category: information research, education, disciplines, professions
Impact factors and half-lives
It's that time of year when academic journal editors nervously look at the Web of Science data to see how they've done compared with their competitors, as assessed by the magic bibliometrics that are now the basis of any assessment of how 'good' a journal is. In my case, of course, I was looking to… Continue reading Impact factors and half-lives
Inforum proceedings
The proceedings of the Prague Inforum conference, which I mentioned in a previous post, are now available online here. They are of interest to anyone concerned with the use of digital information sources, particularly though not entirely in a Central European context. My own paper, 'Library / information prospects: three views of the future', can… Continue reading Inforum proceedings
Inforum conference in Prague
As part of my visit to Prague last week, I gave a presentation to the opening session of the InForum conference. This is an international meeting, albeit with a mainly Central European audience, covering all aspects of modern librarianship and information science. It was the first time I had attended; it is a very efficiently-run… Continue reading Inforum conference in Prague
Information Science in Transition
My colleague Lyn Robinson has beaten me to the announcement, in a posting on her blog, of an excellent new book from Facet Publishing. Edited by Alan Gilchrist, 'Information Science in Transition' has 16 contributed chapters (originally articles in a special issue of the Journal of Information Science) covering a wide range of issues relating… Continue reading Information Science in Transition
Is our worth the only thing of value ?
I presented a one-day training course earlier this week for Aslib, the London-based Association for Information Management. I present a few professional development courses for them, and this was a new one, run for the first time. Called Assessing our Worth, it looks at ways of measuring the impact and value of library / information… Continue reading Is our worth the only thing of value ?
An obsession with our own future ?
One of the nice things about editing an academic journal - in my case the Journal of Documentation - is that one gets to write editorials. This doesn't give quite the scope for free expression that writing a blog does - for one thing, the publisher might take a view if the expression were too… Continue reading An obsession with our own future ?
An informationist ? and occasional ?
The term 'informationist' has a long history of being not quite accepted. At present, it seems to have been hi-jacked by healthcare librarians, to imply someone working in that area who has a good understanding of, and perhaps even a qualification in, relevant clinical specialities; a pretty specific instance of an 'information scientist in context'.… Continue reading An informationist ? and occasional ?
The Occasional Informationist 