IS Colloquia - 2010
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February 25, 2010 - Ron Day (Indiana University)
Ronald E. Day
Associate Professor
School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University
February 25th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
GSE&IS 111; reception to follow
Free and open to all.
The topic of this colloquium is on the self-imposed limits of Library and Information Science discourse and its institutional discipline. In particular, Day will discuss the disciplinary limits that the field places upon itself, its phobia regarding critical theory and interdisciplinary work (outside of computer science), and why public information is not seen as part of our domain of inquiry. He will also describe how persons are understood and constructed as ‘information seeking’ subjects in this field, including LIS students and researchers. Finally are questions of the overarching disciplining of students and researchers toward ‘positive’ research in the field, a research that is, in part, often founded upon very shaky ‘foundational’ theoretical models. Arguably, these questions are linked in the construction of a rather docile and uninteresting political subject, both within and outside of information research in the university, both within and outside of information professionalism, and in the public at large, which should all now be educated to be “information professionals” in a critical manner. All of this is more striking given the amount of verbiage in the past twenty years or so about the presence and the importance of ‘the information age.’ These questions are specific to Library and Information Science, but they also extend out to information science more generally understood and to questions about the formation of subjectivity in the contemporary university and in U.S. politics.
This event is sponsored by the UCLA Graduate Students Association.
March 4, 2010 - Beth Yakel
Authority and Engagement: Archives and the Social Web
Elizabeth Yakel
University of Michigan, School of Information
March 4th, 2010
GSEIS 111
3-5 pm
Free and open to all students and professionals
This talk will focus on peer production in cultural institutions, specifically archives and special collections. There are social contracts implicit in all activities. Both peer production activities and archives and explore have implicit social contracts which are not necessarily compatible. Given the nature of these contracts, what are the prospects for peer production and the implementation of the social web in archives and special collections? Using the "Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections" as a starting point, this presentation will discuss how shared authority and distributed curation are being implemented in archives and the potential for real change in the relationship between archivists and communities to enable peer production.
May 20, 2010 - David Kirsch (University of Maryland)
More information TBA
May 27, 2010 - The Annual Breslauer Distinguished Lecture featuring Jerome McGann
What Do Scholars Want?
Begins at 4pm. More information TBA
Spring 2010, exact date TBD - Jacqueline Stewart (Northwestern University)
More information TBA
