The concept of the source in a world of multiple channels
Elisabeth Davenport, Pierrette Bergeron, Mariam Ginman, Yves Marcoux, Diane H. Sonnenwald, Sanna Talja, Isto Vatanen · Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology · 2004
The proposed panel/workshop will explore the concept of the source, focusing on the criteria that are used to identify a source by practitioners who work with multiple media. The perspective taken is, broadly, a social informatics one. A number of questions will be addressed such as: Do multiple channels affect judgments about sources? Are criteria more localised in a world of diverse digital objects? How do criteria differ across activities? How do criteria differ across domains? Who makes decisions about what is a source? What is expertise in the world of open sources? To what extent can my sources be your sources? A panel of international researchers will critically assess their own and others work on sources. Current articulations of the digital library make the concept of the source a rich, and even a problematic, topic for investigation. Librarianship may now be described in terms the curation of configurations of diverse objects, labelled in ways that contribute to multiple uses across domains. This ‘objectification’ in the interests of efficiency may fail to reflect judgments about content that are made by a range of practitioners (scholars, teachers, librarians, managers) in the field. It may be helpful to explore the notion of a source in terms of interactions that involve a number of agents -humans and artefacts. The speakers, who as active researchers with recent empirical experience, will critically assess the concept of the source in a number of contexts such as health informatics, archaeology, public administration, business intelligence. The views of the speakers, researchers who come from different countries, may in themselves raise issues of cultural diversity. design of digital libraries media products and services specialist research using multiple media resources information architecture ethics and values Eisabeth Davenport is on the faculty of the School of Computing at Napier, and a Board Member of the International Democracy Centre there. She has been involved in a number of collaborative projects funded by the European Commission (EC) in the areas of community informatics, e-government and knowledge management for virtual enterprises. Each of these has raised issues about sources. She will moderate the panel. Pierrette Bergeron is a faculty member at EBSI in the University of Montréal. Her doctoral dissertation on information management was undertaken in Syracuse University, main research interests are in the areas of information management, knowledge management and business intelligence, and she has undertaken a number of national and international projects in these areas. The focus of her presentation is the validity of the business source in a world of multiple media. Mariam Ginman is Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Political Sciences and Professor of Information Studies, Abo Akademi University Finland, and has worked for many years in the field of health informatics. In recent years the focus has been on lay use of health information and how information behaviour is moulded by social influences and collective behaviour, and this will be the topic of her presentation. Yves Marcoux is a faculty member at EBSI, University of Montréal. He is involved in teaching, research, standardization, and international cooperation activities in the fields of structured documents, information retrieval, database systems, and digital information management. His main research interests are currently structured document implementation methodologies and information retrieval in structured documents. He is currently the principal architect for the Governmental Framework for Integrated Document Management, a project funded by the National Archives of Quebec and the Quebec Treasury Board and will address issues of shared documentation in public administration. Diane Sonnenwald is a Professor at the Swedish School of Information and Library Science at Göteborg University and University College of Boràs, and an affiliate professor at the University of North Carolina (USA). She conducts research on collaboration and collaboration technology in a variety of contexts. Her recent work in the area has been funded by the NIH, NSF and NLM. She will address the topic of the compromised source in work that draws on shared repositories. Sanna Talja is a senior assistant professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of Tampere. She earned her PhD in the University of Tampere in 1998. She has published mostly in the area of information seeking research, and on social constructionist approaches to scholarly communication and knowledge organization. Her current research interests include computer supported scientific collaboration, field differences in the use of networked resources, and user-centered digital library design and evaluation. Isto Vatanen, MA, is assistant lecturer and researcher at the Information Studies department of Àbo Akademi in Abo, Finland. He is preparing his doctoral dissertation on information management in virtual environments with special reference to archaeological information. He graduated in cultural history with studies and extensive work experience in archaeological computing, and has published on subjects ranging from ancient history to multimedia usability.