Intellectual diversity and the faculty composition of iSchools

Abstract

We provide evidence and discuss findings regarding the intellectual distribution and faculty composition of academic units involved in the iSchool community. To better understand the intellectual heritage and major influences shaping the development of the individual and collective identities in iSchools, we develop a classification of the intellectual domains of iSchool faculty education. We use this to develop a descriptive analysis of the community's intellectual composition. The discussion focuses on characterizing intellectual diversity in the iSchools. We conclude with a discussion of the potential implications of these trends relative to the future development of the iSchool community. IntroductionThrough this paper we describe and discuss the intellectual underpinnings and institutional characteristics of the faculties of the academic units in the iCaucus. We do so for two reasons. First, the academic units who collectively choose to identify themselves as iSchools represent a form of innovation in the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary pursuit of teaching and research on information-related topics and phenomena. These types of units are seen by many as critical to the future of the academy ("Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research," 2005). The analysis uses the educational background of iSchool faculty as a means for understanding the intellectual composition of the unit, using the doctoral degree earned as a proxy for individuals' intellectual perspectives.Second, as members of an iSchool and participants in the iSchool movement, we are intellectually pragmatic: What trends can we detect and report regarding the disciplinary structures and hiring patterns of the faculties that make up the various iSchools? Moreover, what do these structures and patterns mean for the intellectual geography of iSchools? Responses to these questions are likely of interest to others in iSchools, to some other members of intellectual communities that are found in iSchools, and to various agencies and institutions who interact with iSchools or might be considering creating an iSchool. Scholars in the sociology of science may be interested in the nature of iSchools as academic innovations, much as is posited in "Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research," (2005).As seen from their collective web presence (www.ischools. org), iSchools present themselves as a thriving, heterogeneous, and inter-or multidisciplinary scholarly community who focus on the convergence of information, computing, and their roles in human and social experience. It also seems that iSchools demonstrate a meaningfully different academic focus from intellectual "near neighbors" in the academy such as computer science, information systems, science and technology studies, education and communication, and others (e.g., Constable & Richardson, 2009;Wiggins, 2009;Grudin, 2011a).To advance our position, the paper continues with a discussion of the motivation for the research and a summary of prior empirical studies of the iSchools. We then present the results ...

Disciplinary, national, and departmental contributions to the literature of library and information science, 2007–2012

“…Among faculty in North American PhD‐granting LIS departments not associated with the iSchools Organization, the most common doctoral fields are library science (44%), information science (28%), and education (12%) (Lopatovska & Ransom, ). Among iSchools faculty, the most common doctoral fields are computer science (30%), information science (11%), library science (10%), and the social and behavioral sciences (10%) (Wiggins & Sawyer, ).…”

Liberating interdisciplinarity from myth. An exploration of the discursive construction of identities in information studies

“…Bibliometric research provides statistical analyses that show increases in authors' and the field's interdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity is in the DNA of the 65 iSchools. The contexts in which interdisciplinarity is found are diverse, yet mainly revolving around the identity of information studies (Aparac‐Jelušić et al., ; Arafat et al., ; Baradol & Kumbar, ; Bawden, ; Buckland, ; Cronin, , , , ; Druin et al., ; Furner, ; Holland, ; McNicol, ; Nolin & Åstrøm, ; Palmer, ; Radford, ; Saracevic, ; Sugimoto, Ni, Russell, & Bychowski, ; Webber, ; Weech & Pluzhenskaia, ; Wiegand, ; Wilson, ; Winter, ), and the iSchools and the Information Field (Beaton, Jeng, & Champagne, ; Bonnici, Subramaniam, & Burnett, ; Bonnici, Julien, & Burnett, ; Budd & Dumas, ; Burnett & Bonnici, , ; Chu, , ; Dillon, ; Gunawardena, Weber, & Agosto, ; Madsen, ; Madsen & Ho, ; Wedgeworth, ; Wiggins & Sawyer, ; Wu, He, Jiang, Dong, & Vo, ). Despite the ubiquity of interdisciplinarity in the literature, the importance of interdisciplinarity to the identity of information studies and the iSchools organization's commitment to interdisciplinarity, it is noticeable that discussions of what interdisciplinarity is and how it is practiced in research processes are scarce, and boundary work is largely ignored in the literature.…”

“…Bibliometric research provides statistical analyses that show increases in authors' and the field's interdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity is in the DNA of the 65 iSchools. The contexts in which interdisciplinarity is found are diverse, yet mainly revolving around the identity of information studies (Aparac-Jelušić et al, 2013;Arafat et al, 2014;Baradol & Kumbar, 1998;Bawden, 2007;Buckland, 2012;Cronin, 1995Cronin, , 2002Cronin, , 2005Cronin, , 2012Druin et al, 2009;Furner, 2010;Holland, 2008;McNicol, 2003;Nolin & Åstrøm, 2010;Palmer, 2010;Radford, 2003;Saracevic, 1999;Sugimoto, Ni, Russell, & Bychowski, 2011;Webber, 2003;Weech & Pluzhenskaia, 2005;Wiegand, 1999;Wilson, 2003;Winter, 1996), and the iSchools and the Information Field (Beaton, Jeng, & Champagne, 2014;Bonnici, Subramaniam, & Burnett, 2009;Bonnici, Julien, & Burnett, 2013;Budd & Dumas, 2014;Burnett & Bonnici, 2006Chu, 2010Chu, , 2012Dillon, 2012;Gunawardena, Weber, & Agosto, 2010;Madsen, 2012;Madsen & Ho, 2014;Wedgeworth, 2013;Wiggins & Sawyer, 2012;Wu, He, Jiang, Dong, & Vo, 2011). Despite the ubiquity of interdisciplinari...…”

Rhetoric and the cold war politics of information science

“…As such, it adds to debates regarding information studies' status as a discipline, profession, field, science, social science, humanity, and so on. (Arafat et al, 2014;Cronin, 2012;Madsen, 2015;Webber, 2003), which is particularly salient in a field notable for its multiple and diverse lines of inquiry (Larivière, Sugimoto, & Cronin, 2012;Madsen, 2015;Wiggins & Sawyer, 2012). Previous research had already demonstrated how disciplinary terminologies have influenced research (Day, 2000), how European documentation evolved differently than its North American cousin (Buckland, 1996;Farkas-Conn, 1990;Rayward, 1997), and how disciplinary "myths" frame the field (Cronin, 2012;Day, 2005;Frohmann, 1994;Madsen, 2015).…”