Introduction to Information Science

Bawden, David; Robinson, Lyn

doi:10.29085/9781783300761

Cited by 52 publications

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“…Not only has the word had many different meanings over the years -its entry in the full Oxford English Dictionary of 2010, which shows its usage over time, runs to nearly 10,000 words -but it is used with different connotations in various domains. For overviews of the mutability and diversity of the information concept, see Belkin (1978), Machlup and Mansfield (1983), Qvortrup (1993), Bawden (2001), Capurro and Hjørland (2003), Gleick (2011), Ma (2012, and Bawden and Robinson (2012).…”

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“…Buckland gives arguments in favour of the information-as-thing approach, as being very directly relevant to information science, since it deals primarily with information in the form of documents. Information-as-process underlies theories of information behaviour which have a focus on the experience of individuals, such as those of Dervin and Kuhlthau (Bawden and Robinson 2012). Informationas-knowledge invokes the idea, well-trodden in the library/information area, as noted above, that information and knowledge are closely related.…”

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Mind the Gap: Transitions Between Concepts of Information in Varied Domains

Robinson

Bawden

2013

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

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Mind the Gap: Transitions Between Concepts of Information in Varied Domains

Robinson

Bawden

2013

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

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“…The numbers measure attributes of people and groups, cognition and networks, collections and activities; all three of Popper's Worlds, for those who like that ontology as a basic for the subject (Bawden and Robinson, 2012B;Bawden, 2002).…”

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Information’s Magic Numbers: The Numerology of Information Science

Bawden¹,

Robinson²

2016

Theories of Informetrics and Scholarly Communication

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regularities of nature can be captured by simple mathematical relationships is a long way from Blair's (1976, p. 81) notion that "numbers, quite distinct from their empirical use, become a language, as full of metaphor and dimension as poetry". However, before sneering at the idea that numbers in themselves can have a significance, we should remember that the long-standing, and still influential, Platonic tradition within science views numbers as having their own objective existence, and indeed that the physical universe and everything in it is, at root, a mathematical structure made of numbers (see Tegmark [2014] for a recent and accessible account of this position).As well as numbers per se, numerology is often also taken, usually critically, to mean an enthusiasm for simple numerical formulae, usually involving integers, capturing some significant aspect of reality. These have been seen in both the sciences and the social sciences: notoriously, the British physicist and astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington spent many years seeking simple integer relationships as the clue to the universe (Kilmister, 2005). It is clear that there are strong relations between numbers, the physical world and cultural issues, as is clearly shown by the sequence of "kissing numbers," the number of spheres which in any space exactly bound a further identical sphere (Weisstein, n.d.); two points on a one dimensional line bound a third point, six circles circumscribe a seventh, and twelve balls circumscribe a thirteenth. The resultant sequence-three, seven, thirteen-captures the principle significant/lucky/unlucky numbers in numerous cultures, and is numerologically present in the 'leader with twelve followers' meme of Christ, Osiris, King Arthur, and others (Blair, 1976). 4 Therefore, despite the dangers of slipping into a facile numerology, simple numbers and integer relations may still be worth investigating, in science, in the social sciences, and specifically in LIS.There are, in fact, relatively few such simple numbers and number relations in our discipline and what there are have come in from adjacent disciplines. We will consider seven, a suitably magic number in itself, of these. In truth, they are not all very simple: one is very large, some have alternatives, one is a sequence, and one is infinite. These numbers encapsulate a variety of issues: how much information there, or could be; the optimal size of communicating groups; the structure of information networks; the distribution of information activities; and the 4 It would have been nice if the four-dimensional kissing number, which was not known until 2003 (Pfender & Ziegler, 2004) and cannot be intuitively grasped like the small dimension equivalents, had also related to some culturally significant number. Disappointingly, it was shown to be 24, and 25 does not appear to have significance in any culture.

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“…If we understand the library and information sciences to be concerned with the whole communication chain of recorded information, from creation to use (Duff, 1997;Robinson, 2009;Bawden and Robinson, 2012), then it is clear that the emergence of immersive documents affects all parts of the chain. The most dramatic effects are to be seen in the use of such documents, active participation in an immersive reality being qualitatively different from passive reading of a conventional information resource.…”

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Immersive information behaviour: using the documents of the future

Robinson

2015

New Library World

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link FindingsImmersive documents are likely to have a significant effect on library/information service provision, as it is to expected that novel information behaviours will emerge as these documents become widely used. Studies of immersive information behaviour and practices will be valuable in planning for how library/information services can best provide access to such documents, and may also guide the development of such documents. They may also contribute to the development of information behaviour research generally, and to better interaction between research and practice. Research limitationsSince such documents are not yet in wide use, the conclusions are necessarily speculative. Originality This is the first paper to discuss information behaviour in respect of immersive documents.

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Introduction to Information Science

Cited by 52 publications

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Mind the Gap: Transitions Between Concepts of Information in Varied Domains

Mind the Gap: Transitions Between Concepts of Information in Varied Domains

Information’s Magic Numbers: The Numerology of Information Science

Immersive information behaviour: using the documents of the future

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