Information-not-thing: further problems with and alternatives to the belief that information is physical

In this short paper, we show that a popular view in information science, information-as-thing, fails to account for a common example of information that seems physical. We then demonstrate how the distinction between types and tokens, recently used to analyse Shannon information, can account for this same example by viewing information as abstract, and discuss existing definitions of information that are consistent with this approach. Dans ce court article nous montrons qu'une vision populaire en sciences de l'information, l'information en tant qu’une chose, échoue à rendre compte d'un exemple commun d'information qui semble physique. Nous démontrons ensuite comment la distinction type/token, utilisée récemment pour analyser l'information de Shannon, peut rendre compte de ce même exemple en considérant l'information comme abstraite, et nous discutons des définitions existantes de l’information qui sont compatibles avec cette approche

Information research, practice, and education continue to invite and benefit from philosophy

It has become easy to make a case for the relevance, richness, and importance of philosophical thinking for information research and practice. [Introduction to a special issue

Information in the personal collections of writers and artists: Practices, challenges and preservation

This publication is with permission of the rights owner (Sage) freely accessible.This article presents findings from interviews with 18 writers and artists in New Zealand, whose lives and work have potential heritage value. The objective was to investigate the perceived value of participants’ personal collections, the relevant management practices and challenges, and their potential effects on preservation and (re)use. The findings provide a characterisation of the personal information management (PIM) practices of writers and artists, revealed challenges common to organising personal collections across time and devices as well as those caused or increased by the nature of writers’ and artists’ work, and produce insights into the impact of perceived collection value and PIM practices on future access, preservation and (re)use of such collections.Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, University Research FundPeer Reviewe

Practical and philosophical considerations for defining information as well-formed, meaningful data in the Information Sciences

This paper demonstrates the practical and philosophical strengths of adopting Luciano Floridi’s “general definition of information” (GDI) for use in the information sciences (IS). Many definitions of information have been proposed, but little work has been done to determine which definitions are most coherent or useful. Consequently, doubts have been cast on the necessity and possibility of finding a definition. In response to these doubts, the paper shows how items and events central to IS are adequately described by Floridi’s conception of information, and demonstrates how it helps clarify the muddy theoretical framework resulting from the many previous definitions. To this end, it analyzes definitions, popular in IS, that conceive of information as energy, processes, knowledge, and physical objects. The paper finds that each of these definitions produces problematic or counterintuitive implications that the GDI suitably accounts for. It discusses the role of truth in IS, notes why the GDI is preferable to its truth-requiring variant, and ends with comments about the import of such a theory for IS research and practice

A Guided Tour Study of the Untidy But Inspirational PIM of Visual Artists

While all individuals deal with increasingly large amounts of digital information in their everyday lives and professionally, prior works suggest visual artists have unique information management practices and challenges. This study therefore examined the personal information management (PIM) practices and challenges of six practising visual artists using guided tours and short interviews. It was found that the visual artists had some unique practices connected to their strong emphasis on serendipity, inspiration, and visual dimensions of information. Like non-artists, the participants faced challenges across all phases of PIM, chiefly an excess of information and fragmented organisation, and they found it especially hard to assess how personal and valuable their information could be. After characterising this rarely discussed PIM demographic, we draw on the findings to provide concrete recommendations for artists doing PIM, for information and cultural heritage institutions, and for designers of PIM software.Comment: 14 pages. Final version to be published in ASIS&T '23: Proceedings of the 86th Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 6

Making space for the future: the importance of deletion for LIS and the information society

The information society generally, and information studies specifically, are understandably concerned with productive actions done with data and information, like preservation, access, and (re)use over time. While such concerns are important and their related activities are clearly valuable, we will soon be facing limits to storage and related resources, and so information scholars and practitioners must more fully consider and support the complementary part of the information lifecycle: deletion. We outline the growing necessity of data and information deletion for social and environmental sustainability through several example concerns. We then consider several challenges of and to deleting that must be considered and addressed, from societal to individual scales, by drawing on works in information behaviour, personal information management, human-computer interaction, and the history, philosophy, and ethics of information. Deletion is an understudied phenomenon of growing importance, and although it has a broadly negative perception in comparison to preservation, it has some notable advantages for individuals and society. Information scholars and practitioners have an important role to play in understanding and supporting deletion; recommendations for each are provided here.Peer Reviewe

Planning for Ethical Agent-Agent Interaction

In this position paper for the 2019 CSCW workshop Good Systems: Ethical AI for CSCW I propose one tool and one idea for navigating the complex ethical problem space that results from the interaction of human and/or AI agents in shared, hopefully cooperative, computing environments

Closed Shop or Collaborative Hub? An Analysis of the Partners' Importance in CANZUK Countries' Research Collaborations

Collaborative partners are important in international research collaboration. The research collaborations between four CANZUK countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom) are examined to see whether their research connections are different from the research relationships with other countries. This paper measures the affinity index values and analyses the development of research collaborations among CANZUK countries with those between the CANZUK and other countries. The whole counting method and the fractional counting method are applied in this study to compare the differences in the results. The findings show that although the affinity index values of CANZUK countries were decreasing over time, the importance of CANZUK partners to CANZUK countries has likely increased over time at the expense of the other partners' importance. The study also shows the minor differences in results obtained by applying two different counting methods. These differences can be explained by the nature of the counting methods, and the choice to use either one of these two counting methods should be considered in other international research collaboration studies.Peer Reviewe