Introduction to Library Trends 47 (2) Fall 1998: How Classifications Work: Problems and Challenges in an Electronic Age

published or submitted for publicatio

Infrastructure and ethnographic practice: Working on the fringes

By bringing together science studies, information science and ethnographic fieldwork in interdisciplinary research the author argues for the relevance of ethnographic practices when studying information systems as infrastructures of communication. Ethnographic fieldwork focuses attention on fringes and materialities of infrastructures and renders the researcher able to read the invisible layers of control and access, to understand the changes in the social orderings that are brought about by information technology. Numerous examples and personal accounts of studies of infrastructures with ethnographic tools show how paying analytical attention to mundane aspects of information infrastructures helps to understand the consequences of the imbrication of infrastructure and human organization

iSchool Proposal for Themed Wildcard Session on New Information Systems Methods

???New Information Systems??? is an emerging field composed of social studies of science (STS), information sciences (IS), workplace studies and technological design, and new media forms such as cyberinfrastructure or eResearch. Within this area we are exploring the connections and inter-relationships between empirical studies of information at knowledge creation and use, and methods from more traditional IS, social networks, grounded theory and ethnomethodology. The collective creation of a theoretically driven cluster at this juncture would tie us together in a convergence that would link our scholarship and enable students to access this strong and existing - yet invisible - college. We propose a ???wildcard??? session here that makes a space for people to speak about their methods, assess their viability for helping to build our emerging community, and hopefully to explore the ???behind the scenes??? actions associated with practicing any methods. Such an event is most timely. At the recent meetings of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S), an entire day was devoted to the emerging intersections of STS and IS. In addition it should be noted that the same book, Memory Practices in the Sciences (G. Bowker, MIT Press, 2007), won the best book award at both ASIST and 4S. This might be seen as a harbinger for the deeply theoretical and methodological work that is to take place, if the intersection is to be a robust one. Our research directions will be focused on studies of infrastructure, ethical actions that are inscribed into IS, and theoretical studies of questions such as ???what is useful information???? We need to unpack the contextual nature of knowledge creation and use. As well, we need to understand the ways in which it is entangled with obligations from different domains and communities of practice such as privacy, consent, anonymity, confidentiality, ownership and a whole host of organizational and professional matters. New media studies point to an intense overlapping and interrelationship of fields and disciplines. Methods should come from a combination of (1) sensitivity to the historical moment (e.g., multiculturalism, extreme changes in the meaning of ???global???); (2) an assemblage of tools that are ready to hand, theoretically driven, are pleasant and effective to use; and (3) embody an ethical commitment to the values and meanings of those who are being studied (emic), within a way to explore the conventions, standards and infrastructures that both constrain and enable their experiences (etic). The papers here aim to show a range of approaches from the current STS, IS and Workplace Studies emergence that speak to the criteria detailed above. Each participant in the experiemntal forum will bring an example of their research, and as honestly as possible, assess its methodological strengths and weaknesses. The assessment will be relative to strengthening the development of the iSchool community, to the intersections noted above, and to the welfare of respondents

Grenzobjekte und Medienforschung

Susan Leigh Stars (1954-2010) Werk bewegt sich zwischen Infrastrukturforschung, Sozialtheorie, Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Ökologie und Feminismus. Die wegweisenden historischen und ethnografischen Texte der US-amerikanischen Technik- und Wissenschaftssoziologin liegen mit diesem Band erstmals gesammelt auf Deutsch vor. Ihre Arbeiten zu Grenzobjekten, Marginalität, Arbeit, Infrastrukturen und Praxisgemeinschaften werden interdisziplinär kommentiert und auf ihre medienwissenschaftliche Produktivität hin befragt. Mit Kommentaren von Geoffrey C. Bowker, Cora Bender, Ulrike Bergermann, Monika Dommann, Christine Hanke, Bernhard Nett, Jörg Potthast, Gabriele Schabacher, Cornelius Schubert, Erhard Schüttpelz und Jörg Strübing.Susan Leigh Star's (1954-2010) research encompasses aspects of infrastructural and social theory, knowledge ecologies, feminism and theories of marginality. For the first time, this volume introduces the American science and technology sociologist's most important writings in German. Her texts on border objects, marginality, infrastructures and standards are commented upon by academics and scientists in these fields, and analyzed for their relevance to media studies. With commentaries by Geoffrey C. Bowker, Cora Bender, Ulrike Bergermann, Monika Dommann, Christine Hanke, Bernhard Nett, Jörg Potthast, Gabriele Schabacher, Cornelius Schubert, Erhard Schüttpelz und Jörg Strübing

Grenzobjekte und Medienforschung

Susan Leigh Star's (1954-2010) research encompasses aspects of infrastructural and social theory, knowledge ecologies, feminism and theories of marginality. For the first time, this volume introduces the American science and technology sociologist's most important writings in German. Her texts on border objects, marginality, infrastructures and standards are commented upon by academics and scientists in these fields, and analyzed for their relevance to media studies. With commentaries by Geoffrey C. Bowker, Cora Bender, Ulrike Bergermann, Monika Dommann, Christine Hanke, Bernhard Nett, Jörg Potthast, Gabriele Schabacher, Cornelius Schubert, Erhard Schüttpelz and Jörg Strübing.Susan Leigh Stars (1954-2010) Werk bewegt sich zwischen Infrastrukturforschung, Sozialtheorie, Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Ökologie und Feminismus. Die wegweisenden historischen und ethnografischen Texte der US-amerikanischen Technik- und Wissenschaftssoziologin liegen mit diesem Band erstmals gesammelt auf Deutsch vor. Ihre Arbeiten zu Grenzobjekten, Marginalität, Arbeit, Infrastrukturen und Praxisgemeinschaften werden interdisziplinär kommentiert und auf ihre medienwissenschaftliche Produktivität hin befragt. Mit Kommentaren von Geoffrey C. Bowker, Cora Bender, Ulrike Bergermann, Monika Dommann, Christine Hanke, Bernhard Nett, Jörg Potthast, Gabriele Schabacher, Cornelius Schubert, Erhard Schüttpelz und Jörg Strübing

Medien der Kooperation

Die digital-vernetzten Medien erfordern neue Analysen, Theorien und Geschichten. Sie verändern unseren Blick auf die Geschichte von Infrastrukturen, Öffentlichkeiten und Medienpraktiken. Was wären Ansätze für eine Medientheorie, die praktischen „skills“ des Mediengebrauchs,seiner soziotechnischen Materialität und den bürokratischen wie epistemischen Qualitäten der Medien gerecht wird? Die vorliegende Ausgabe 1/2015 der Navigationen widmet sich Medien als kooperativ bewerkstelligten Kooperationsbedingungen. Sie erbringen, so die These, konstitutive Vermittlungsleistungen zwischen der Organisation von Arbeit, Praktiken des Infrastrukturierens und der Genese von Öffentlichkeiten in wechselseitiger Interaktion

Extending African Knowledge Infrastructures: Sharing, Creating, Maintaining

World Bank, Knowledge for Development ProgramPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/61201/1/Jackson et al, Extending African Knowledge Infrastructures (March 2008).pd

Accountability Work: Examining the Values, Technologies and Work Practices that Facilitate Transparency in Charities

Charities are subject to stringent transparency and accountability requirements from government and funders to ensure that they are conducting work and spending money appropriately. Charities are increasingly important to civic life and have unique characteristics as organisations. This provides a rich space in which HCI researchers may learn from and affect both held notions of transparency and accountability, and the relationships between these organisations and their stakeholders. We conducted ethnographic fieldwork and workshops over a seven month period at a charity. We aimed to understand how the transparency obligations of a charity manifest through work and how the workers of a charity reason about transparency and accountability as an everyday practice. Our findings highlight how organisations engage in presenting different accounts of their work; how workers view their legal transparency obligations in contrast with their accountability to their everyday community; and how their labour does not translate well to outcome measures or metrics. We discuss implications for the design of future systems that support organisations to produce accounts of their work as part of everyday practice

Breakdown in the Smart City: Exploring Workarounds with Urban-sensing Practices and Technologies

Smart cities are now an established area of technological development and theoretical inquiry. Research on smart cities spans from investigations into its technological infrastructures and design scenarios, to critiques of its proposals for citizenship and sustainability. This article builds on this growing field, while at the same time accounting for expanded urban-sensing practices that take hold through citizen-sensing technologies. Detailing practice-based and participatory research that developed urban-sensing technologies for use in Southeast London, this article considers how the smart city as a large-scale and monolithic version of urban systems breaks down in practice to reveal much different concretizations of sensors, cities, and people. By working through the specific instances where sensor technologies required inventive workarounds to be setup and continue to operate, as well as moments of breakdown and maintenance where sensors required fixes or adjustments, this article argues that urban sensing can produce much different encounters with urban technologies through lived experiences. Rather than propose a “grassroots” approach to the smart city, however, this article instead suggests that the smart city as a figure for urban development be contested and even surpassed by attending to workarounds that account more fully for digital urban practices and technologies as they are formed and situated within urban projects and community initiatives