[NORSLIS] CfP Exploring Information-as-Potentiality: Methods, Approaches, Implications - Special Issue for Library and Information Science Research

Tue Jun 9 14:54:52 GMT 2026

CALL FOR EXTENDED ABSTRACTS
Exploring Information-as-Potentiality: Methods, Approaches, Implications
Special Issue for Library and Information Science Research
Extended abstract submissions due: August 15, 2026
https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/334252/exploring-information-as-potentiality-methods-approaches-implications

Guest Editors:
Alexandra Chassanoff, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Zack Lischer-Katz, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Isto Huvila, Uppsala University, Sweden
Annie T. Chen, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
Rhiannon Bettivia, Simmons University, Boston, MA, USA
Travis Wagner, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

EXPLORING INFORMATION-AS-POTENTIALITY:
Methods, Approaches, Implications

Understanding how people interpret and use digital information is an essential part of building capable, 21st century knowledge systems (Edwards et al., 2013). This takes place through complex epistemological, social, and material processes that are ongoing and contextual, presenting challenges for information researchers. At the same time, information science/studies have called for attention to the mediating role that technology plays in informational processes. With current digital information systems, the interface with which people engage with information resources blends form, content, and interpretation in particular contexts of space and time (Hedstrom, 2002). Both strands of thought converge on the need for new approaches that support inquiry into the dynamic modes of information-making and taking (Huvila, 2022) and their consequential relations within spaces of knowledge production.

For this special issue of Library and Information Research, we invite extended abstract submissions for research papers that frame information and its use as an ongoing, generative process of epistemic possibilities – an approach we call information-as-potentiality (Chassanoff and Chen, 2025). This approach rejects the “conduit metaphor” for information behavior research (Reddy, 1979), instead viewing information as something that is constructed through sociotechnical practices that are material, contextual, and dynamic. This approach holistically integrates four conceptual lenses for studying information processes in context: experienced information, situated information, participatory information, and embodied information (Chassanoff and Chen, 2025). Adopting this approach has implications for a range of subfields in information studies. In cultural heritage and preservation, this approach may reconceptualize fundamental archival terms such as provenance to aid in understanding the embodied and situated dimensions of how information comes to be and persists over space and time; or in data science, reemphasize data as capta (Drucker, 2011), or perhaps as situated data (Lavin, 2025), in order to more ethically source data. Interpreting evidence in scholarly inquiry in this way stands in contrast to extractive data compilation and analysis built on the assumptions of historical regimes of predatory data (Chan, 2025). With the rise of AI and new types of multi-sensory information formats, such as 3D, virtual reality, augmented reality, volumetric data, etc., which is forcing us to rethink existing frameworks, employing a research framework based on information-as-potentiality opens up avenues for new empirical studies that can break out of an information transfer paradigm and re-acknowledge information as fundamentally defined along experiential, situated, participatory, and embodied dimensions.

We seek contributions from information scholars investigating different information-making practices within 21st century knowledge environments in relation to the frame of information-as-potentiality. Such contributions would explore central questions such as: How do we design and evaluate information systems in support of interpretive collaboration and use? How do our embodied interactions with dynamic and multisensory information systems shape how we can know the world? How do human-AI interactions influence human experiences of information seeking and use?

Relevant contributions might address the following thematic areas:
● Designing for epistemic justice/awareness
● More-than-human approaches to information systems
● Information-as-capta
● Speculative archives
● Situated and/or participatory action models
● Studies on embodied and/or enacted information
● User experience and/or navigation design
● Managing audiovisual, immersive, and other multisensory information formats
● Transformations of human experience in the context of AI-mediated information systems
● Information-as-potentiality in information practice/behavior research

Expected Timeline
June 15, 2026: Call for extended abstracts opens
August 15, 2026: Extended abstracts due
October 1, 2026: Notifications to submit full paper
March 1, 2027: *Invited papers due
June 1, 2027: Accepted manuscripts will be notified with revisions shared
August 1, 2027: Revisions due
October 1, 2027: Final manuscripts due

*All papers submitted will go through the standard LISR peer review process.

Submission Information:
Extended abstract length: 800-1200 words
Extended abstract submissions due: August 15, 2026
Extended abstract submissions link: Form
Extended abstracts should include/address the following elements:
• Purpose of research
• Related literature
• Approach/methodology
• Value / implications

All submitted abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors. Invitations to submit full manuscripts to the special issue will be notified on October 1, 2026.

For inquiries about the appropriateness of contribution topics, please contact Alexandra Chassanoff at achass at unc.edu

References:
Chassanoff, A., & Chen, A. T. (2025). Conceptual approaches to information-as-potentiality.Information Research an international electronic journal, 30(iConf), 596-609.

Drucker, J. (2011). Humanities approaches to graphical display. Digital Humanities Quar‑
terly 5 (1): n.p. https://www.digitalhumanities.org//dhq/vol/5/1/000091/000091.html
Edwards, P. N., Jackson, S. J., Chalmers, M. K., Bowker, G. C., Borgman, C. L., Ribes, D., Burton, M., & Calvert, S. (2013). Knowledge infrastructures: Intellectual frameworks and research challenges. University of Michigan. http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/97552

Hedstrom, M. (2002). Archives, memory, and interfaces with the past. Archival Science, 2(1-2), 21–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02435629

Huvila, I. (2022). Making and taking information. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 73(4), 528–541. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24599
Lavin, M. (2025). Why digital humanists should emphasize situated data over capta. In The companion to digital humanities in practice (pp. 121-136). Routledge.

Reddy, M. J. (1979). The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 284–310). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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