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Abstract

Purpose In The Invisible Substrate of Information Science, a landmark article about the discipline of information science, Marcia J. Bates wrote that ".we are always looking for the red thread of information in the social texture of people's lives" (1999a, p. 1048). To sharpen our understanding of information science and to elaborate Bates' idea, the work at hand answers the question: Just what does the red thread of information entail? Design/methodology/approach Through a close reading of Bates' oeuvre and by applying concepts from the reference literature of information science, nine composite entities that qualify as the red thread of information are identified, elaborated, and related to existing concepts in the information science literature. In the spirit of a scientist-poet (White, 1999), several playful metaphors related to the color red are employed. Findings Bates' red thread of information entails: terms, genres, literatures, classification systems, scholarly communication, information retrieval, information experience, information institutions, and information policy. This same constellation of phenomena can be found in resonant visions of information science, namely, domain analysis (Hjørland, 2002), ethnography of infrastructure (Star, 1999), and social epistemology (Shera, 1968). Research limitations/implications With the vital vermilion filament in clear view, newcomers can more easily engage the material, conceptual, and social machinery of information science, and specialists are reminded of what constitutes information science as a whole. Future researchers and scientist-poets may wish to supplement the nine composite entities with additional, emergent information phenomena. Originality/value Though the explication of information science that follows is relatively orthodox and time-bound, the paper offers an imaginative, accessible, yet technically precise way of understanding the field.

Date

30. 4.2020 21:03:22

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Abstract

Purpose Arts-informed, visual research was conducted to document the pictorial metaphors that appear among original drawings of information. The purpose of this paper is to report the diversity of these pictorial metaphors, delineate their formal qualities as drawings, and provide a fresh perspective on the concept of information. Design/methodology/approach The project utilized pre-existing iSquare drawings of information that were produced by iSchool graduate students during a draw-and-write activity. From a data set of 417 images, 125 of the strongest pictorial metaphors were identified and subjected to cognitive metaphor theory. Findings Overwhelmingly, the favored source domain for envisioning information was nature. The most common pictorial metaphors were: Earth, web, tree, light bulb, box, cloud, and fishing/mining, and each brings different qualities of information into focus. The drawings were often canonical versions of objects in the world, leading to arrays of pictorial metaphors marked by their similarity. Research limitations/implications Less than 30 percent of the data set qualified as pictorial metaphors, making them a minority strategy for representing information as an image. The process to identify and interpret pictorial metaphors was highly subjective. The arts-informed methodology generated tensions between artistic and social scientific paradigms. Practical implications The pictorial metaphors for information can enhance information science education and fortify professional identity among information professionals. Originality/value This is the first arts-informed, visual study of information that utilizes cognitive metaphor theory to explore the nature of information. It strengthens a sense of history, humanity, nature, and beauty in our understanding of information today, and contributes to metaphor research at large.

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Abstract

To me the anecdote above is loaded with meaning for this special issue. For starters, other social sciences have long histories of studying what we are now in LIS discovering as embodied information. The German sociologist Norbert Elias's (1939) ground-breaking analysis of table manners (including blowing one's nose and spitting) established a research tradition within sociology that is centered on the body. Similarly, anthropology is home to subdisciplines devoted to research into body language and gesture (kinesics), the body in space (proxemics), touch (haptics), the experience of time (chronemics), and the use of vision (oculesics), and it goes without saying that these corporeal phenomena are seen as informative and communicatory. The aforementioned disciplines have well-developed theoretical and methodological tools to describe these bodily functions and to explain them through lenses of history, sociality, and culture. Hence, any LIS scholar interested in information and the body is a latecomer to a mature research domain; has much catching-up to do; and risks reinventing the wheel.
Another notable aspect of the story above is that certain phenomena-namely, the relationship between human beings and recorded knowledge-are deemed not compelling or research-worthy by other social sciences and are eschewed. The precocious protosociologist in my story sounded almost allergic to paper. Indeed, LIS stands as the resident expert and overseer of the universe of recorded knowledge, and there are no significant contenders, a chance blessing that should be leveraged and celebrated by LIS. On the library side, this authority dates to 2000 BC and the clay tablets in the palace at Nineveh. The information science side has roots in the European documentation movement of a century ago. Later luminaries have continued to position LIS as the singular mediator between people and the documentary realm. Jesse Shera proclaimed that the library brought humankind and the graphic record into harmonious relations. Howard White positioned LIS at the intersection of people and literatures. Marcia Bates cast LIS as a metadiscipline charged with the transmission of and access to recorded knowledge. Why turn our attention away from a nexus that is historically and rightly ours...