habitually probing generalist

Argues that changes in technology, the economics of info systems, and previous research into information behavior is pushing information science to more complexity and predicts that it will become more like the field of communication.

“What has been recommended is to add, as central to our endeavor, a more comprehensive consideration of meaning, intention, cognitive components of personality, and many other topics which have previously been viewed as more a part of the social-behavioral sciences than as integral to information science. The suggestion is that information science can add these topics and incorporate them into our field as add-ons—much like the extra features we’ve jury-rigged onto our systems over the years to overcome acknowledged deficiencies.

I disagree. Any explicit and significant increase in our consideration of meaning, intention, and cognition will affect our field fundamentally. It will bring into question the basic paradigm which has guided our research activities, our educational programs, and our service philosophies. It will ultimately change the very nature of who we are. Conceptually, if not practically, all of information science, but especially information behaviors and information retrieval, will be more profitably seen and understood in the context of human communication” (16).

Various critiques of user studies along the axes of population studied, central focus, information channel, major variables, research methods, and applicability are presented.

Argues that the “often implicit assumptions which underlie how we approach the design of our systems and the provision of information services” no longer serves us and are untenable as they present “an overly simplistic model of human behavior …” (18).

These assumptions under the heads of information needs, information user, and information uses are interrogated. As Katzer states, these assumptions when boldly (and one might add, baldly) stated would be found wanting (18).

The author points to (then) current research showing the limits of, or invalidating, these assumptions and brings attention to those who were calling for information science to become a social science, and perhaps even like the field of human communication.

“It is interesting to note who are making these recommendations. The arguments to consider our field a social science have come almost exclusively from either European-trained information scientists such as Belkin, Brittain, Roberts, or Wilson, or from U.S.-trained communications researchers such as Dervin or Paisley” (20).

Reasons are provided for the affinity between the groups.

Katzer’s main call is not for the subsumption of one discipline into another, but “is a recommendation to consider those principles and practices found in the field of human communication which look as if they could be fruitfully applied in our research” (21).  Along these lines, the author looks at what may be of value from the field of human communications regarding the information channel, meaning, process, and outcomes.

Some of what is presented could easily be presented in an Integrational framework. In the section on Process, Katzer writes: “Communication is a process which occurs over time and in a specific context” (22). It also ties into a domain analytic view; also in Process, “… the fact that communication effects are almost always domain-specific” (23).

Next, the author provides some examples of application of “communication mechanisms to information science” (24).

While discussing cognitive similarity and organizational operators Katzer writes, “The point is to discover the microculture values (which goes beyond the topic), and to use those operators, norms, or success factors to improve our understanding of the user’s information behaviors” (25-6). That could easily be under the macrosocial aspect of Integrationism.

This paper relied heavily on the work of Brenda Dervin and pointed me to several Dervin citations. It isn’t like I have never seen them, but I had only read Dervin & Nilan’s ARIST chapter, “Information needs and uses.” [citation below]

I have been meaning to look more formally into Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology so this was a useful reminder that I need to do that work. The situation has been remedied and I am working my way through a fair bit of her corpus. I was planning to discuss her article “Useful Theory for Librarianship: Communication, Not Information” next, which is one he cited, but think I will hold off for now. I will say that I enjoyed it and found it useful, although I must jettison her view of information as espoused in the article.

Regarding the progress of research in our field since Katzer’s critique was written I have no doubt that some researchers have adopted more of a communicational stance toward our field.  I do not, though, feel that it has been enough.

For me this paper fits well into the sociohistorical view of our field that I am constructing for myself.  It provides a good look at the communicational critique and the response of the field at a specific point in time in which the field was beginning to take these critiques more seriously.  It has helped me to make sense of, or, more accurately, progress toward making sense of, the need for a view of our field that is more aligned with the way we actually communicate.

By the way, a big shout out to Christina Pikas for telling me a couple of years ago to look at Dervin, among others. I knew she was correct but just couldn’t find the time.

See also [this is mostly for me: Some things read this week, 26 August – 1 September 2007 ]: