<div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:16pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">iConference Berlin March 4-7 2014 : A retired LIS
conference goer's untimely observations<br>
<br>
</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:14pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">By Leif Kajberg</span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br>
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. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">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 <i>Institut für Bibliotheks- und
Informationswissenschaft</i>, Humboldt -Universität zu Berlin denied in a short
reply. We chose him because he could talk about an interesting topic !</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">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 <i>big data</i>
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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">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 </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(22,59,246)"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">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</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(22,59,246)"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">. Here, an obvious example - but of course there are
many examples - is Pierre Pierre Levy's book on "Collective
Intelligence" (<i>Collective
Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace</i>. 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 <i>cosmopedia</i>. 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).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">The role , "anatomy",
identity, challenges, disciplinary content, tasks and areas for research of <i>Information History</i> 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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">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.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><br></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class=""><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">There may be</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"> <span class="">several</span> <span class="">reasons for this.</span>
<span class="">Maybe</span> <span class="">thematic</span> <span class="">and
disciplinary</span> emphases<span class="">, theoretical views,</span> <span class="">"</span>paradigms", <span class="">research interests and
profiles represented by</span> <span class="">LIS</span> <span class="">and
related</span> <span class="">communities in the above countries</span> are
differing from<span class=""> those of the</span> <span class="">iSchool </span>world.
Or <span class="">maybe</span> iSchool <span class="">relationships with
individual researchers and academic</span> <span class="">communities in the
"non-English-speaking World"</span> <span class="">are weak or non-</span>existent.
<span class="">Perhaps</span> <span class="">awareness of</span> <span class="">the Berlin Conference</span> <span class="">and its</span> <span class="">program</span> h<span class="">as been limited</span> <span class="">outside Scandinavia</span>, <span class="">Germany, USA and</span> <span class="">UK</span>. <span class="">It is not difficult to</span> <span class="">identify</span> <span class="">linguistic, cultural</span>,
geographical, <span class="">conceptual or subject-specific</span> <span class="">barriers</span> <span class="">or</span> <span class="">dividing
lines</span> <span class="">and possibly</span> <span class="">a financial impediment
as well.</span> The conference fee and other expenses <span class="">may</span>
be an<span class=""> excluding factor when it comes to participation by researchers</span>
<span class="">and</span> <span class="">theorists</span> <span class="">from
other continents</span>. <span class="">But perhaps</span> <span class="">such
a view</span> <span class="">is irrelevant - if it</span> all boils down to <span class="">paper</span> <span class="">quality</span>, selection, filtering <span class="">and peer review</span> <span class="">processes.</span> <span class="">And, as we are informed,</span> <span class="">there is</span> <span class="">growth within the</span> <span class="">iSchool</span> <span class="">movement and increasing impact. So why bother about this diversity
and representativity issue?</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"><span class=""><br></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class=""><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)">Leif Kajberg was for many years with the Royal School of Library and
Information Science.</span></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:12pt;line-height:115%;color:rgb(22,59,246)"> </span></p></div>