[Asis-l] Questions for candidates

[nicholas belkin]

With respect to Jeremy Hunsinger's questions, I would say the following:

1. I'm somewhat suspicious of the general idea of there being a single
"core knowledge area for the digital age"; I believe that I can think of
many areas of knowledge that can legitimately be construed as "core", or
at least "important for people to know about" for the digital age. Media
literacy, which I think is not the same as information literacy, would
be based in a knowledge area that is not information science and
technology, for instance. So I don't think that I would work toward such
a goal at all. More appropriate might be for the Information Science
Education Committee to consider not only education for information
professionals, but also how education in some aspects of information
science and technology education might best be delivered to society as a
whole, and how ASIS&T could play a role in such delivery. This would
entail, obviously, outreach and inclusion, and I suppose
democratization, in that the goal would be to help to insure, to the
extent that ASIS&T can do so, that people in general have the
intellectual tools that they need in order to be effective members of
society in the digital age.

2. The goal of achieving a "better balance" in ASIS&T between theory and
practice, research and application, local and global concerns assumes
that the balance at the moment is not so good, and should become
better.  Certainly there has been ongoing discussion in ASIS&T about
these issues, and concern has been expressed both about "balance" (which
I take to mean the prominence of one or the other of the members of the
presumed dichotomies in ASIS&T activities, or in information science and
technology in general), and ensuring appropriate interaction between the
pairs. My view is that we should work toward ensuring that the members
of these pairs exert appropriate influence on one another; I don't
myself think that there is a problem of balance. In quite pragmatic
terms, achieving appropriate influence is being accomplished, at least
to some extent, by ASIS&T in its mix of sessions at the annual and
mid-year meetings, and in its mix of articles in the Bulletin and in
JASIST. I would be concerned to use the principles of outreach and
inclusion to make sure that the communities associated with what appear
to be poles be represented in ASIS&T, especially in membership and at
the meetings. I guess that I would also like to find ways to convince
people that these are not in fact ends of a dimension, working far apart
from one another, but rather parts of a circle, profoundly influencing
one another. Inclusion and outreach, as indicated above, might help in
this respect. I'm not sure about how principles of democratization and
transparency would work with respect to this issue.

Nick Belkin

jeremy hunsinger wrote:
> 
> One of the most difficult positions to accomplish(i think) for the
> future of the organization and profession is Prof. Menou's goal of:
> 
> "Building Information Science and Technology as the core knowledge area
> for the digital age, achieving a better balance between theory and
> practice, research and application, local and global concerns."
> 
> I would like to hear how both candidates intend to approach the set of
> issues contained in this goal, in particular I am interested in how
> they might think principles of  outreach, democratization, inclusion,
> and transparency might be applied to obtain the goal of a "better
> balance" and becoming a "core knowledge".   Or, if they feel better
> principles are available and/or have some methods already in mind, I'd
> like to know more about them.
> 
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-- 
Nicholas J. Belkin
Chair, and Director of the MLIS Program
Department of Library and Information Science
School of Communication, Information & Library Studies
Rutgers University
4 Huntington Street
New Brunswick NJ 08901-1071 USA
tel: +1 732 932 7500 x8271  fax: +1 732 932 2644
email: nick at belkin.rutgers.edu
http://scils.rutgers.edu/~belkin/belkin.html