There is a Facebook group that will serve as the start of a network for librarians with philosophy backgrounds. It is called Philosopher Librarians. Join if this description works for you: Welcome, librarians who have degrees in philosophy, whether they be undergraduate degrees, masters degrees, or phds. We’re here because of what we have in … Read more Facebook Group for “Philosopher Librarians”
Award Announcement July 1, 2013 We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2013 Litwin Books Award for Ongoing Dissertation Research in the Philosophy of Information. Out of a field that included some highly interesting and solid work, one applicant’s submission stood out strongly. We are granting this year’s award to Steve McKinlay of … Read more 2013 Litwin Books Award for Ongoing Dissertation Research in the Philosophy of Information
Jesse Shera, Librarianship, and Information Science Jesse Hauk Shera did perhaps more than any other figure in defining library and information science in the mid 20th century. He pioneered the application of information technology in libraries and in the field of documentation, as head of the American Documentation Institute (now ASIST), as a professor at … Read more New book: Jesse Shera, Librarianship, and Information Science
In the Library with the Lead Pipe published an interesting editorial this morning titled, “DIY Library Culture and the Academy,” though editorial may not be exactly the right word for it, because mostly it is a call for discussion of the ideas it presents. Library Juice Press is mentioned as an example of a DIY … Read more Comments in response to Lead Pipe editorial, “DIY Library Culture and the Academy”
Award for Ongoing Doctoral Dissertation Research in the Philosophy of Information https://staging.litwinbooks.com/award.php 1. Nature of the Award 1.1 The award shall consist of $1,000, given annually to a graduate student who is working on a dissertation on the philosophy of information (broadly construed). 2. Purpose of the Award 2.1 The purpose of this award is … Read more Litwin Books Award for Ongoing Doctoral Dissertation Research in the Philosophy of Information
Please note that the deadline has been extended to midnight Friday, February 15th *Call for Participation (NASKO 2013) * *Transition Cultures, Transition KO: Evolving Exploration, Critical Reflection, and Practical Work * ISKO C/US invites submissions of abstracts for its Fourth North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization (NASKO 2013) to be held June 13-14, 2013, in … Read more CfP: Call for Participation (NASKO 2013)
The 2013 LACUNY Institute – Libraries, Information, and the Right to the City April 5, 2013 John Jay College of Criminal Justice Keynote Speakers: Christine Pawley – Former director of the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin – Madison and historian of print culture in America. Jessa Lingel – Doctoral student at … Read more The 2013 LACUNY Institute: Libraries, Information, and the Right to the City
I have just done an interview with Maria Accardi for the Library Juice Academy news blog. Maria is teaching a class next month called, “Changing Lives, Changing the World: Information Literacy and Critical Pedagogy.” This course is based on part on work that she did leading up to her co-editing the book published by Library … Read more Interview with Maria Accardi
In a Library Juice blog post some time ago, Rory Litwin recommended an essay by Karl Mannheim entitled “Conservative Thought.” In the essay, Mannheim argues that political groupings can be distinguished by specific “styles of thought” (though a style of thought will not be limited to politics). Styles of thought characterize more than just the … Read more Political Identities
Emily Ford does a great job with this overview of library philosophy in In the Library With a Lead Pipe: What We Do and Why We Do It, published this morning. Much of it is a review of the literature in this important thread of LIS scholarship, covering a span that runs from 1934 up … Read more Emily Ford on Library Philosophy
At ALA in Anaheim, Wayne Bivens-Tatum will be signing copies of Libraries and the Enlightenment, from 10am to 11am on Saturday the 23rd at the Litwin Books/Library Juice Press booth (booth 2769). We are offering a discount on this book if you purchase it between now and the conference and bring it to the book … Read more Bivens-Tatum Book Signing – Discounts in Advance
Something that never fails to charm me is discovering the ways that acquaintances use the library, especially when it comes up before they find out that I work there. That’s what happened one day in our main library when I bumped into someone I know from the salsa socials, and it turned out that he’s … Read more Philosophy and Democracy in the Public Library
The most recent Weekend Edition Saturday on NPR had a story about a different kind of archive: a vault containing seeds from the world’s grains, for preservation purposes. Central to the story is the Global Crop Diversity Trust. This is interesting in a number of ways. One rather academic question it raises is whether seed … Read more A Different Kind of Archive: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The latest issue of InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies (Volume 8, Issue 1) is available at interactions.gseis.ucla.edu. Table of Contents: Articles Stop Speaking For Us: Women-of-Color Bloggers, White Appropriation, and What Librarians Can Do About It By Julia Glassman How Much Knowledge Can They Gain? Women’s Information Behavior on Government Health Websites … Read more New issue of InterActions
If you’re headed to the iSchool conference, something to read if you haven’t yet is a paper that was rejected for inclusion in the 2008 iSchool conference, by Jonathan Furner and Anne Gilliland, both professors at the UCLA School of Information (officially an iSchool). It’s titled, The Humanistic iSchool: A Manifesto. I am very much … Read more The Humanistic iSchool
Susan Cain offers a most welcome statement in yesterday’s New York Times: “The Rise of the New Groupthink.”
CALL FOR PAPERS 2nd Milwaukee Conference on the Ethics of Information Organization June 15 – 16, 2012 Milwaukee, WI Information organization, like other major functions of the information professions, faces many ethical challenges. In our literature, ethical concerns have been raised with regard to, topics such as, the role of national and international tools and … Read more CFP – 2nd Milwaukee Conference on the Ethics of Information Organization
Call for Chapters Piracy: Leakages From Modernity Edited by Martin Fredriksson (Linköping University) and James Arvanitakis (University of Western Sydney) Published by Litwin Books We are inviting proposals for chapters for an anthology on Piracy planned to be published by the end of 2012. ‘Piracy’ is a concept that seems everywhere in the contemporary world. … Read more Call for Chapters: Piracy: Leakages from Modernity
I was just reading a bit of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and came across a section that I think applies to the bibliometric obsessions with impact factors, h- and g-indexes, and other quantitative measures of the value of a scholar’s work. The following is from pages 119 and 120 of the translation by Swenson and … Read more Kierkegaard on impact factors
I ran across this essay by Karl Mannheim while looking into ideas on “styles of thought” in relation to philosophy and politics. Mannheim was one of the founders of the “sociology of knowledge,” which is an area of inquiry that some in LIS have said constitutes a good theoretical underpinning for what we do. The … Read more Karl Mannheim on “conservative thought”