[NORSLIS] iSchool Conference Berlin March 2014

[Leif Kajberg]

*iConference Berlin March 4-7 2014 : A retired LIS conference goer's
untimely observations *

*By Leif Kajberg*


The attendance at iConference 2014 in Berlin, at the venerable and imposing
Humboldt University, was impressive. The iConference had changed location
and this year, for the first time, the iEvent was held outside North
America. During the Plenary Session of the iConference we got a clear
impression that the iSchool movement is in progress. And details were given
on the number of schools with this profile and belonging to iSchool
network. In Europe, there are thus 18 members, 28 are located  in North
America whereas Asia/Australia accounts for 9. In "Commonwealth" there are
12 members and you can also find a handful of British schools with the
iSchool profile. But Germany does not loom large in this respect. The host
country's very few academic institutions in this area includes the Humboldt
University's School of Library and Information Science. But besides the
Humboldt School, what other German schools have developed an i-specific
profile and become members of the network ? Apparently, not many German LIS
academic colleagues were present at the conference and what about France
and Spain, for example? In throwing a glance at the composition of the
Berlin Conference Program Committee, one gets a clear impression of
American dominance and leadership. Nordic countries were also fairly well
represented , and there were educators and researchers from academic
institutions in countries such as Austria, Ireland and Japan as well.


The iSchool movement's strong position in the U.S. triggers some
considerations on the focus, profile , identity, aims and objectives and
thematic coverage of iSchool education and research in a broader
language-related cultural, and geographical context. The 2014 iConference's
varied palette of sessions, activities, workshops, seminars, poster
sessions,  etc. obviously illustrates the strong information-centered
educational content, theoretical viewpoints, key issues and flavor of
research, which are prevalent within the iSchool network. And that is not
unnatural bearing in mind that the conference was organized by educators
and researchers active within the "community" that these schools represent.
On the other hand, one could discuss and perhaps even question the
"mainstream" focus and the tendency to "hegemony" and bias in defining
issues, problem areas , course content and project themes, etc., that is
characteristic to education and research within the iSchool community. In a
broad sense, and slightly trivially, iSchool-centered education, academic
discussion and research seem tinted/inspired by the approaches to and views
on information science, organization of information/knowledge, IR,
information/knowledge management , information society, information
processes , information behavior and information users, information
technology applications , etc. which have been prevalent particularly
within North American and British, and probably also to a certain extent,
within Scandinavian information science communities in recent decades. OK,
it is a truism, but because of the iSchool movement's U.S. origin it, of
course, tends to reflect practices, traditions , priorities and ideological
positions that are characteristic to the information sector in the U.S.,
where the commercially oriented view of the surrounding world, the private
sector orientation and the IT-intensive approaches and applications are
indubitable. This "information-ideological" focus seems natural, and it is
probably widely accepted as well, and, on the surface, it does not
necessarily give offence or occasion criticism. Nevertheless, it could be a
problem in an international conference context. You could argue , and I
will get back to and try to demonstrate later in this subjective, cursory
and slightly "idiosyncratic " report, that, in a broader international
context, the iSchool mindset along with the universe of information and
dissemination of information and information studies represented (and
promoted ) by the iSchool community appears slightly one-sided. As I see
it, it tends to overlook, forget, ignore or downgrade a number of
culturally specific approaches and analytical angles that unfold in other
national and geographical environments. There may also be examples of
perspectives and (social, political and cultural ) approaches to
traditional memory institutions' activities , tasks, objectives and
rationale (public libraries , for example) , that, seen through the iSchool
lenses, are regarded as oldschool , marginal, outdated , problematic or
irrelevant.


But let's look more closely at a few selected elements, illustrative
reports and inputs from the conference program featuring an enticing
smorgasbord of exciting presentations, discussions, interesting project
accounts and state-of- the-art reviews , etc. and which gave an impression
of innovative conceptions and approaches.


A bird's eye-view of the subject areas, issues and developments which were
covered at the conference, clearly illustrates that the (LIS or information
sciences) discipline's traditional boundaries are shifting and being
expanded and redefined. The interdisciplinary focus ( which has always
existed and been highly debated ) is becoming more distinct these days, and
new interfaces with and relationships to other (adjacent ) academic and
professional disciplines and research areas such as computer science,
communication and media studies, learning , anthropology and ethics are
arising. It also appears from the conference program that research and
paper writing still takes place in information science classic or "pure ":
information seeking , IR, and information/knowledge organization, but many
new fields of study and investigation pop up and leave their stamp on
conference and seminar programs. It is conspicuous that a field such as
"information society" - this broad , inclusive and somewhat vague and
diffuse label - increasingly invites analysis and research. One almost has
the impression that textbooks and journal articles in the LIS field are
lagging behind in the identification and exploration of current and
emerging objects of analysis and in mapping new phenomena, trends and
developments in information needs, information habits , government-driven
intervention in and the efforts to set up regulatory frameworks for
information flows and information access, data exchange, communications
traffic, the massive growth in social media, IT, information ethics, etc.


I noted with mixed feelings that the conference opening Plenary Session 1
included a keynote to be held by Tony Hey from Microsoft Research. But it
seems completely out of place, at least in my view, to invite a top boss
from the information industry's major multinational corporations and
commercial players. It's really ironic in these NSA monitoring times, but
luckily this keynote spawned a critical question for Tony Hey from one of
the participants (non-answered because of its controversial nature). But
why this bow and a scrape and this sponsor-related submissiveness to the IT
industry giants ? The same practice was observed in Sweden in Borås, at the
Anniversary Conference of the Swedish School of Information Science in
December 2012, where a keynote speaker from Microsoft had been invited as
well. But what is it that makes Microsoft 's developers and top executives
uniquely qualified to address an international conference audience of
information analysts, information consultants , information providers , LIS
educators and researchers? Everything is surely not about the future of
high tech, new and novel gadgets, smart storage methods in the making,
etc.? Here's a discreet post-event note to the conference organizers and
program development team, just as a hint:  when Berlin was chosen as a
conference site, and when you were in Germany, would it not have been
obvious to think of a German keynote speaker ? At least to some of us it
does not seem impossible that Germany with its historic and illustrious
tradition in research libraries and the construction of major
infrastructures for facilitating sector-specific information supply for
research, technology and industrial development and innovation could have
inspired the formulation of an alternative keynote theme. In this case it
would not have been necessary to call a keynote speaker from one of the
major U.S. Internet companies. Could the reason be submissiveness to
conference sponsors? - No, Conference Chair Michael Seadle from the *Institut
für Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft*, Humboldt -Universität zu
Berlin denied in a short reply. We chose him because he could talk about an
interesting topic !

IConference Berlin 2014 also illustrates the growing awareness of and
interest in new or fairly recent document types of information objects,
formats, entities, etc., from a research and analysis perspective: emails,
web pages, tweets and discussion threads in social web contexts to mention
some. The digital age with its characteristics, risks, and potential tools
and services (including social media ) adds new facets, approaches and
perspectives to the study of various user populations' needs, preferences,
behavior, identity, etc. Therefore, the myriad of traces and imprints that
people leave behind in the digital world and the whole problem of *big data*
represent new areas of research and analysis. A few projects were reported
at the IConference that analyze special clienteles and target groups in the
digital society including children and young people, senior citizens (dealt
with in a poster session contribution) and Asian immigrants.


Session 8 included two papers, which covered the NSA surveillance
activities. The workshop on surveillance was a huge success. There was
really cramped in the seminar room. No wonder, since tracking of national
and global surveillance data and data privacy constitutes a huge problem
complex and a major challenge for democratic societies. In this respect, it
appears absolutely essential to define the LIS-specific and
iSchool-relevant implications and analytical approaches to these
controversial activities and processes. As was pointed out in the
discussion after one of the NSA papers, these monitoring activities clearly
represent a challenge to the values ​​we try to instill in our students.
Hence, there is a need for iSchools to provide responses and to find their
stances in this context. NSA surveillance can be considered a threat to the
democratic institutions and processes we believe in; and the media are not
doing a good job here. States and intelligence services' logging of
Internet traffic has made many people aware of the dystopian features of
the contemporary digital era. Overall, it is interesting to observe how the
information society and the seamy side of the digital age, "the evil
dimension", the growing volume of "negative behavior" and intimidating
incidents, etc. is maturing as a research topic. Thus, papers were
presented that address such themes as monitoring and privacy infringing
activities, misinformation through Twitter, censorship, disinformation,
connectivity refusal , informational apathy and plagiarism within the
information science community. The extent of cybercrime and misuse of
personal information and data, the ingenious forms of cheating, mobbing and
threats on social media like Facebook appears breathtaking. Add to this the
authorities' Internet filtering , monitoring and excessive censorship
activities, as mentioned above, and you even see a state leader's attempts
to ban and destroy Twitter in his own country. In the light of these
developments, it is tempting to look back in time to the Internet's
"formative years" and the positive expectations there were to the Internet
and cyberspace in the first half of 1990s. It would be interesting to
contrast and analyze the situation and views of the Internet in the year
2014, when we are increasingly becoming aware of the negative and
problematic perspectives and phenomena of the digital age, and hopeful,
positive and sometimes naive notions of cyberspace as a democratic space
and as a liberating force with inherent humanistic and cosmopolitan values
in the early 1990s​​. Here, an obvious example - but of course there are
many examples - is Pierre Pierre Levy's book on "Collective
Intelligence" (*Collective
Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace*. Cambridge, MA:
Perseus Books, 1997). Lévy continues a tradition of French social theorists
exploring developments in technology and communication. He envisages the
development of a new knowledge space labeled *cosmopedia*. The author seems
convinced that WWW, hypertext, and hypermedia can provide us with a new
architecture for our thought in the form of collective intelligence. Today
this wordy vision seems outstripped by actual developments in the Internet
and the social web. Lévy 's book appears strained, unrealistic, dated and
irrelevant in its naive optimism. To be more concrete, you could make a
comparison of today's dystopias on social webs, the dark sides of mass
surveillance, censorship, government injustices, intrusion into private
affairs, compromising of personal data, data breaches (for the time being,
we have dramatic examples in these areas in Denmark), cyber crime, identity
thefts, etc. Nowadays, it is a bit curious to be reminded of these
optimistic and hopeful times, two decades ago, with their idealistic
expectations on citizen participation, digital democracy and WWW as a tool
for achieving increased international understanding . Taken together, these
"keywords" and hints provide a tentative outline of a broad research theme
within the discipline of information history (and maybe also within the
emerging field of Social Studies of Information).


The role , "anatomy", identity, challenges, disciplinary content, tasks and
areas for research of *Information History* in an iSchool context was dealt
with in greater detail at one of the Berlin conference workshops. Besides,
I have noted that the Royal School of Library and Information Science at
the University of Copenhagen has announced a symposium on privacy and
surveillance on August 26.


The organizers of the Berlin Conference and the program committee are two
be congratulated to an exciting program: the diversity of presentations,
the breadth of the topics, the impressive thematic scope and the
timeliness. But I have a couple of reservations. To me the massive emphasis
on the US-based iSchool agenda along with the thematic focus that can be
found in study and research within this cross-disciplinary academic
community is not without problems. There is always a risk of bias creeping
in in that activities, priorities, trends, developments and discussions in
LIS communities outside the English-speaking countries are overlooked or
even ignored. For instance, one notes the absence of papers authored by
presenters from Latin America, Eastern and Central Europe, Southern Europe,
France, Russia (and Ukraine …). Even the host country was very sparsely
represented among the conference paper presenters. A linguistic, cultural,
and geographical barrier seems to be a reality here.


There may be several reasons for this. Maybe thematic and disciplinary
emphases, theoretical views, "paradigms", research interests and profiles
represented by LIS and related communities in the above countries are
differing from those of the iSchool world. Or maybe iSchool relationships
with individual researchers and academic communities in the
"non-English-speaking World" are weak or non-existent. Perhaps awareness of the
Berlin Conference and its program has been limited outside
Scandinavia, Germany,
USA and UK. It is not difficult to identify linguistic, cultural,
geographical, conceptual or subject-specific barriers or dividing lines and
possibly a financial impediment as well. The conference fee and other
expenses may be an excluding factor when it comes to participation by
researchers and theorists from other continents. But perhaps such a view is
irrelevant - if it all boils down to paper quality, selection, filtering and
peer review processes. And, as we are informed, there is growth within the
iSchool movement and increasing impact. So why bother about this diversity
and representativity issue?


*Leif Kajberg was for many years with the Royal School of Library and
Information Science.*
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