ABCs of Information: Content, Context, Relevance, and other Challenges
Useful information services can be provided without great intellectual rigor or technical precision, but even a little critical scrutiny reveals some basic, useful terms (such as content, context, and relevance) to be problematic conceptually and/or in practice. Meanwhile technological changes continually generate additional options. How could we evolve a more satisfactory tool-kit of concepts and terms? Continuing past seminar discussions, I will review these and other less-known concepts and terms that could enable a stronger and more coherent basis for information studies, including affordances, autodocuments, documentarity, and particulars. Join us for discussion.
Michael Buckland is emeritus professor in the School of Information and co-director of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. He grew up in England and studied history at Oxford and librarianship at Sheffield University. He trained at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and moved to the University of Lancaster Library in 1965. In 1972, Buckland moved to the United States to be Assistant Director of Libraries for Technical Services at Purdue University Libraries before becoming Dean of the School of Library and Information Studies at Berkeley from 1976 to 1984. He served from 1983 to 1987 as Assistant Vice President for Library Plans and Policies for the nine campuses of the University of California. Professor Buckland's interests include bibliography, library services, search and discovery, cultural heritage, and the history and theory of documentation.
