Monday, 25 Feb 2008
White, Alan R. Introduction. In White, Alan R, ed. 1968. The Philosophy of Action. London: Oxford University Press.
This edited volume on the philosophy of action includes articles by J. L. Austin, Danto, Davidson, Anscombe, and others (some classics). I probably won’t read much more of it and I think I grabbed it when I saw it in the stacks due to … oh, who knows why I grabbed it a few days ago. ::shrug::
The Introduction was fairly interesting. He primarily covers:
- A. The nature of action
- B. Descriptions of action
- C. Explanations of action
The first part gives an overview of action by pulling apart ‘do, ‘action’, and ‘act’, as they are not the same thing. It then quickly narrows to focusing on human action. The last section addresses the following questions:
(i) How does each of these explanations actually explain? (ii) How are the different explanations, and the various factors that occur in each, related to each other? (iii) Are some of these kinds of explanations mutually exclusive? (iv) How many, if any, of these explanations give an explanation of a causal kind, or, if this is different, of the kinds which are found either in explanations of human characteristics other than behaviour or in explanations of inanimate nature (13)?
Here’s an example sentence from the section addressing question (ii) above:
To give the motive for a deed is to indicate that desire for the sake of satisfying which the deed was done, provided that what was done was not itself the deed which was desired, but a deed which the agent thought would bring about or would amount to what was desired (14).
Either excruciatingly painful, pure mental masturbation, or both, depending on your temperament.
Black, Alistair. The information society: a secular view. In: Hornby, Susan, and Zoë Clarke, ed. 2003. Challenge and Change in the Information Society. London: Facet.: 18-41.
Critiques the “near-paradigmatic status” of the information society. Argues that the discourse around the information society is a mirage. It is also exposed as a ‘regime of truth” whose “legitimacy, [and] sustenance, is drawn from a wide array of interested parties who, albeit perhaps not in any conspiratorial way, stand to gain social or professional recognition, if not material reward, from establishing the information society as a ‘given’ phenomenon, as an incontrovertible ‘fact’ (19).
Yes, that certainly implicates librarians and libraries.
Demonstrates that the information society fits within modernity and that there have been equally important ‘information ages’ previously.
The information society cannot be conceptualized as a post-industrial, post-modern phenomenon, for its essences - scientific progress and individual and social emancipation among them - are surely rooted in the modern societies which have flowed, over the past three centuries, from industrialism, capitalism and the Enlightenment project (33).
Also touches on the utopianism of the information society. Quite interesting and recommended.
The book includes sections on: The information society: fact or fiction? (3 chaps.); The information society and daily life (3 chaps.); The information society and policy (2 chaps); and, The information society and the information professional (4 chaps).
Tuesday, 26 Feb 2007
Read 2 more chapters and the Introduction in the above information society book.
From the Introduction:
Our idea from the outset was to let the authors have their own voice and to allow debate and discussion within the text and between the authors.
This book is intended for those people in professional practice and in the field of academic study and research who have an interest in the information society and its impact on the profession. We hope that this collection will enable the reader to consider different viewpoints and aspects of the information society (xiii).
Cornish, Graham P. Freedom versus protection: the same coin or different currencies. P. 169-183.
Discusses “three basic concepts in the information world which appear, on occasions at least, to be at odds with each other: the right of freedom of expression, the right of freedom of access to information and the right to protect what we create (mostly copyright) (169).
Brophy, Peter. The role of the professional in the information society. P. 217-232.
Discusses the impact that the information society is having in the information professions, professionalism, and professional ethics.
Tuesday, 26 Feb 2008
Abbott Andrew. (2007 preprint) The Traditional Future: A Computational Theory of Library Research.
Recommended to me by Nathan in a comment in Oct 2008. I finally got around to reading the Peter Brantley article, The Traditional Future, on 2 December. I immediately and dutifully saved the Abbott preprint and printed it as soon as I could do so double-sided (easily).
Dr. Abbott is coming to GSLIS in March to give the Spring 2008 Windsor Lecture.
The title of his talk is “Library Research and Its Infrastructure in the Twentieth Century.”
I have known that he iss coming for a while now and have held this article for reading until closer to his visit. I’m not a standard social science researcher nor a traditional library researcher (although much closer to library researcher) so I may not be qualified to comment on some of this but it seems fairly plausible, if admittedly somewhat schematic. I also do not enjoy his use of the computing metaphor. The world faces enough issues from analogizing practically everything to computers.
All in all, fairly interesting. I will enjoy going to his lecture more prepared than most. There were also a couple of connections to the rhetoric of science and division of labor, which are important ideas in my current work.
Wednesday - Thursday, 27 - 28 Feb 2008
International Society for Knowledge Organization, and University College, London. 2004. Knowledge Organization and the Global Information Society: Proceedings of the Eighth International ISKO Conference, 13-16 July 2004, London, UK. Ed. Ia McIlwaine. Würzburg: Ergon.
- Green, Rebecca and Lydia Fraser. Patterns in verbal polysemy. 29-34.
- O’Keefe, Daniel J. Cultural literacy in a global information society-specific language: an exploratory ontological analysis utilizing comparative taxonomy. 55-59.
- Binding, Ceri and Douglas Tudhope. Integrating faceted structure into the search process. 67-72. (Thu)
- Mai, Jens-Erik. The role of documents, domains and decisions in indexing. 207-213. (Thu)
I really liked the Green and Mai articles. Mai, especially, will be valuable for my CAS paper as a widening of the concept of domain analysis.
Wednesday - Saturday, 27 Feb - 1 Mar 2008
Toolan, Michael J. 1996. Total Speech: An Integrational Linguistic Approach to Language. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press.
Began this again. Read about half in the back half of December but had to put it aside to finish my bibliography and a new semester and ….
- Introduction.
- Ch. 1: On Inscribed or Literal Meaning (Thu)
- Ch. 2: Metaphor (Fri-Sat)
- Ch. 3: Intentionality and Coming into Language (Sat-Sun)
Thursday - Friday, 28 - 29 Feb 2008
Skare, Roswitha, Niels Windfeld Lund, and Andreas Vårheim, ed. 2007. A Document (Re)turn: Contributions from a Research Field in Transition. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
- Ørom, Anders. The Concept of Information versus the Concept of Document. 53-72.
- Frohmann, Bernd. Multiplicity, Materiality, and Autonomous Agency of Documentation. 27-39.
- Drucker, Johanna. Excerpts and Entanglements. 41-52.
Saturday, 1 Mar 2008
McGarry, Dorothy. An Interview with Elaine Svenonius. 2000. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 29(4):5-17.
Sent to me by Bryan Campbell back in mid-Jan; finally found the time to read it. I knew Svenonius had done “some things” in our field, but I simply had no idea!
Saturday, 1 Mar 2008
Mai, Jens-Erik. 2005. Analysis in indexing: document and domain centered approaches. Information Processing & Management 41, no. 3:599-611. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VC8-4BN0DSN-2/2/041a56f590f2166e0305c00d5d311a73.
This article appears to be the formal, published representation of Mai’s ISKO article above, The role of documents, domains and decisions in indexing. It will be used to expand the concept of domain analysis, primarily, and perhaps also in my commentary on applications of Integrationism to LIS, in this case indexing.
Recommended.