[Sigia-l] RE: [aifia-members] IA research?

[Peter Morville]

Thanks PeterV for writing such a provocative article and including a
forward-looking research agenda. Here are a few thoughts and reactions:

* Facets: I'm not sure PeterMe deserves or claims credit for first bringing
facets to IA. A bunch of librarians at a company called Argus did some of
the earliest work in this area, though we were only applying the ideas of an
Indian librarian from the early 20th Century (1) to the fairly new medium of
the Web. PeterMe has done a fantastic job spreading and advancing the ideas
of faceted classification, and I personally consider him in IA insider. And
the creators of software tools that leverage facets (such as
http://endeca.com/) have been very much aware of and in touch with the IA
community.

* Applied Field: I've always seen IA as an applied field that can borrow
from pure research performed in many disciplines including HCI, cognitive
science, information retrieval, etc. And there's a huge amount out there
that we have yet to integrate into practice. I agree that it would be great
to see more research that's specific and useful to the practice of IA, but
practitioners have limited influence over the research agendas of academic
institutions.

In short, I think your critique of the current state is somewhat inaccurate
and overly negative, but if it stimulates the IA community to brainstorm
ideas, perform more research, learn from other fields, share our knowledge
with others more effectively, and become more innovative, then I vote YES.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._R._Ranganathan


Peter Morville
President, Semantic Studios
www.semanticstudios.com

-----Original Message-----
From: aifia-members-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:aifia-members-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Peter Van
Dijck
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2004 5:32 PM
To: aifia-members at lists.ibiblio.org; sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [aifia-members] IA research?

Apologies for cross posting and for pointing to a blog entry and for the 
long link.

I wrote a long rambling entry about (the lack of) IA research and 
innovation. Are we building a practice and a body of knowledge, or are 
we slowly dying out? Again, apologies for linking, but here goes:

http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2004/11/21/2167/

I'd like comments/ideas. Am I the only one who feels we, as a 
profession, need to get with the program? Oh well.

Cheers,
Peter


_______________________________________________
aifia-members mailing list
Post to this list: aifia-members at lists.ibiblio.org
List information: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/aifia-members