abstract:Media scholars and historians are well aware of major gaps within the archival record, gaps that have fundamentally shaped the theories and methodologies of media studies as a discipline. However, much of the valuable media studies research that has been done to interrogate ideological work within "the archive" is actually research into the politics of one specific archival process: acquisition. This article focuses instead on the process of archival description. Comparing the rhetorical strategies present in the press surrounding the Harry Ransom Center's (HRC) acquisition of Matthew Weiner's Mad Men materials with the HRC finding aid's description of the collection itself, this article demonstrates a historiographical imperative for media scholars to cultivate basic archival literacies drawn from the archival disciplines themselves. I argue that by better valuing the intellectual labor of archivists, media scholars will be well-positioned to make use of the considerable archival record that does remain.
{"title":"Processing Mad Men: Media Studies, Legitimation, and Archival Description","authors":"K. Cronin","doi":"10.7560/IC56202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/IC56202","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Media scholars and historians are well aware of major gaps within the archival record, gaps that have fundamentally shaped the theories and methodologies of media studies as a discipline. However, much of the valuable media studies research that has been done to interrogate ideological work within \"the archive\" is actually research into the politics of one specific archival process: acquisition. This article focuses instead on the process of archival description. Comparing the rhetorical strategies present in the press surrounding the Harry Ransom Center's (HRC) acquisition of Matthew Weiner's Mad Men materials with the HRC finding aid's description of the collection itself, this article demonstrates a historiographical imperative for media scholars to cultivate basic archival literacies drawn from the archival disciplines themselves. I argue that by better valuing the intellectual labor of archivists, media scholars will be well-positioned to make use of the considerable archival record that does remain.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"56 1","pages":"138 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49479957","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom by Jessa Lingel (review)","authors":"Kimberly Anastácio","doi":"10.1525/9780520975705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520975705","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"57 1","pages":"217 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43953806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:CR/10 is a digital oral history platform that aims to collect and preserve cultural memories of China's Cultural Revolution (1966–76). With a rhetorical analysis of the design features and curation processes of the CR/10 website, this article discusses the functions of CR/10 as a Warburgian memory atlas that shape the nonlinear, multifaceted narratives of a historical incident. Alongside this rhetorical analysis, I also conducted three sets of user experience studies with over thirty participants both within and outside the academy, including an ethnographic conference observation, a virtual ethnography of an online book group, and several semi-structured interviews, to examine CR/10's usability and propose new design opportunities to empower the interface. This article offers a strong case for the datafication of cultural memories and contributes to digital archives and humanities interface design with an innovative theoretical lens.
{"title":"Curating China's Cultural Revolution (1966–1976): CR/10 as a Warburgian Memory Atlas and Digital Humanities Interface","authors":"Rongqian Ma","doi":"10.7560/ic57103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic57103","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:CR/10 is a digital oral history platform that aims to collect and preserve cultural memories of China's Cultural Revolution (1966–76). With a rhetorical analysis of the design features and curation processes of the CR/10 website, this article discusses the functions of CR/10 as a Warburgian memory atlas that shape the nonlinear, multifaceted narratives of a historical incident. Alongside this rhetorical analysis, I also conducted three sets of user experience studies with over thirty participants both within and outside the academy, including an ethnographic conference observation, a virtual ethnography of an online book group, and several semi-structured interviews, to examine CR/10's usability and propose new design opportunities to empower the interface. This article offers a strong case for the datafication of cultural memories and contributes to digital archives and humanities interface design with an innovative theoretical lens.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"57 1","pages":"27 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42443414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:It has been argued that the Dewey Decimal Classification system—the DDC—is Hegelian, that the primary division of the system is based on Hegel’s philosophy. This article argues against this claim. It demonstrates that the underlying principle for the distribution of subjects in the DDC is not Hegelian and that the support for this idea was always weak. It also demonstrates that, as a classification principle, the supposed philosophy underlying the DDC is inconsequential and implies a reactionary image of knowledge. Fortunately, the DDC makes very little, if any, use of this philosophy. Hegel’s philosophy involves a sophisticated and detailed method for knowledge organization that has been completely unexplored. This article clears the ground for such exploration by disentangling Hegelian philosophy from the dated metaphysics allegedly underlying the DDC.
{"title":"Hegel and Knowledge Organization, or Why the Dewey Decimal Classification Is Not Hegelian","authors":"S. F. Kislev","doi":"10.7560/IC56102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/IC56102","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:It has been argued that the Dewey Decimal Classification system—the DDC—is Hegelian, that the primary division of the system is based on Hegel’s philosophy. This article argues against this claim. It demonstrates that the underlying principle for the distribution of subjects in the DDC is not Hegelian and that the support for this idea was always weak. It also demonstrates that, as a classification principle, the supposed philosophy underlying the DDC is inconsequential and implies a reactionary image of knowledge. Fortunately, the DDC makes very little, if any, use of this philosophy. Hegel’s philosophy involves a sophisticated and detailed method for knowledge organization that has been completely unexplored. This article clears the ground for such exploration by disentangling Hegelian philosophy from the dated metaphysics allegedly underlying the DDC.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"56 1","pages":"32 - 48"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42830045","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:The Digital Future Coalition (1996–2002) was an unprecedented public interest coalition on internet and copyright policy with much farther-ranging effects than has been recognized previously. Uniting commercial and noncommercial stakeholders to push back against intellectual property maximalism on the nascent internet, it altered both treaty and legislative language, entered a trope (“balance”) into national discourse on copyright policy, blocked US copyright protection for databases, enhanced popular engagement with fair use, and set the stage for the Right to Repair movement. This historical research was accomplished primarily by interviewing representatives of the Digital Future Coalition (DFC) and opposing groups, as well as one ex-official, and by consulting a hitherto-untapped private archive of documents relevant to the prehistory and 1996–2002 history of the DFC.
{"title":"The Public Interest and the Information Superhighway: The Digital Future Coalition (1996–2002) and the Afterlife of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act","authors":"Bryan Bello, P. Aufderheide","doi":"10.7560/IC56103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/IC56103","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The Digital Future Coalition (1996–2002) was an unprecedented public interest coalition on internet and copyright policy with much farther-ranging effects than has been recognized previously. Uniting commercial and noncommercial stakeholders to push back against intellectual property maximalism on the nascent internet, it altered both treaty and legislative language, entered a trope (“balance”) into national discourse on copyright policy, blocked US copyright protection for databases, enhanced popular engagement with fair use, and set the stage for the Right to Repair movement. This historical research was accomplished primarily by interviewing representatives of the Digital Future Coalition (DFC) and opposing groups, as well as one ex-official, and by consulting a hitherto-untapped private archive of documents relevant to the prehistory and 1996–2002 history of the DFC.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"56 1","pages":"49 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42896659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Our culture is dominated by digital documents in ways that are easy to overlook. These documents have changed our worldviews about science and have raised our expectations of them as tools for knowledge justification. This article explores the complexities surrounding the digital document by revisiting Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge—the idea that “we can know more than we can tell.” The theory presents to us a dilemma: if we can know more than we can tell, then this means that the communication of science via the document as a primary form of telling will always be incomplete. This dilemma presents significant challenges to the open science movement.
{"title":"What Documents Cannot Do: Revisiting Michael Polanyi and the Tacit Knowledge Dilemma","authors":"C. Burns","doi":"10.7560/IC56104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/IC56104","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Our culture is dominated by digital documents in ways that are easy to overlook. These documents have changed our worldviews about science and have raised our expectations of them as tools for knowledge justification. This article explores the complexities surrounding the digital document by revisiting Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge—the idea that “we can know more than we can tell.” The theory presents to us a dilemma: if we can know more than we can tell, then this means that the communication of science via the document as a primary form of telling will always be incomplete. This dilemma presents significant challenges to the open science movement.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"56 1","pages":"104 - 90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43353329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Three popular knowledge organization systems (KOSs)—the Encyclopædia Britannica’s “Outline of Knowledge,” Roget’s International Thesaurus’s “Synopsis of Categories,” and the Dewey Decimal Classification—are compared in the context of a taxonomy of evaluation methods for KOSs that takes into account similarities and differences in formats and purposes. The goals are to argue for the wider adoption of a framework for KOS evaluation of the kind presented here; to promote the treatment of encyclopedia outlines and thesaurus synopses as well as library classification schemes as KOSs assessable via such a framework; and to improve our understanding of KOSs in general.
{"title":"Knowledge Organization in the Wild: The Propædia, Roget’s, and the DDC","authors":"J. Furner","doi":"10.7560/IC56101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/IC56101","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Three popular knowledge organization systems (KOSs)—the Encyclopædia Britannica’s “Outline of Knowledge,” Roget’s International Thesaurus’s “Synopsis of Categories,” and the Dewey Decimal Classification—are compared in the context of a taxonomy of evaluation methods for KOSs that takes into account similarities and differences in formats and purposes. The goals are to argue for the wider adoption of a framework for KOS evaluation of the kind presented here; to promote the treatment of encyclopedia outlines and thesaurus synopses as well as library classification schemes as KOSs assessable via such a framework; and to improve our understanding of KOSs in general.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"56 1","pages":"1 - 31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44157268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:Computation in the sciences does not sufficiently account for aesthetics, which prevents information from being corroborated. This argument is made through a comparison between virtual earth modeling communities and epistemic culture and an elaboration on modeling methods as exemplary of the negotiations between scholarly knowledge, aesthetics, and computer resources necessary for visualization. The salience of these negotiations to institutionalized epistemic practice is reinforced through three histories of visualization in the sciences: computation in ecology, empirical modeling and physically based rendering, and visualization in scientific computing. The article flags the significance of this argument for its role in shaping public policy.
{"title":"Arguing against Graphic Ambivalence: What Earth Modeling Reveals about Visualization in Scientific Computing","authors":"Nicole Sansone Ruiz","doi":"10.7560/ic55302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic55302","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:Computation in the sciences does not sufficiently account for aesthetics, which prevents information from being corroborated. This argument is made through a comparison between virtual earth modeling communities and epistemic culture and an elaboration on modeling methods as exemplary of the negotiations between scholarly knowledge, aesthetics, and computer resources necessary for visualization. The salience of these negotiations to institutionalized epistemic practice is reinforced through three histories of visualization in the sciences: computation in ecology, empirical modeling and physically based rendering, and visualization in scientific computing. The article flags the significance of this argument for its role in shaping public policy.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"55 1","pages":"204 - 225"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48763238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:This article describes the unfolding idea of the literary archival collection through the early history of the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo (UB). The influence of founder Charles Abbott’s innovative idea on special collections libraries, literary study and pedagogy, and book history helped to change these fields in dramatic and unforeseen ways, most provocatively by insisting that materials that were once assumed by librarians, scholars, and university administrators to be trash had the potential to be some of the most valuable artifacts for scholarly pursuit and collegiate education. The Poetry Collection was assembled from the efforts of its staff and the cooperation of its authors rather than from the tastes of an individual collector, demonstrating what it means for an institutional repository to design and compile its own collection democratically.
{"title":"Creating the Twentieth-Century Literary Archives: A Short History of the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo","authors":"A. Fraser","doi":"10.7560/ic55304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic55304","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:This article describes the unfolding idea of the literary archival collection through the early history of the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo (UB). The influence of founder Charles Abbott’s innovative idea on special collections libraries, literary study and pedagogy, and book history helped to change these fields in dramatic and unforeseen ways, most provocatively by insisting that materials that were once assumed by librarians, scholars, and university administrators to be trash had the potential to be some of the most valuable artifacts for scholarly pursuit and collegiate education. The Poetry Collection was assembled from the efforts of its staff and the cooperation of its authors rather than from the tastes of an individual collector, demonstrating what it means for an institutional repository to design and compile its own collection democratically.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"55 1","pages":"252 - 270"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46400825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT:The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978 established public ownership over records created by the executive branch to ensure permanent preservation of historically valuable materials. The law resulted from an unprecedented constitutional and political crisis spurred by the Nixon administration’s assertion of executive privilege during the Watergate investigations, a series of events that finds many similarities in the current Trump administration’s efforts to control records and information it produces. This article examines the politicization of presidential records in the intervening decades, particularly the problematic relationship between the PRA, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and executive privilege in shaping the historical record.
{"title":"Politics, Privilege, and the Records of the Presidency","authors":"Brad Wiles","doi":"10.7560/ic55305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7560/ic55305","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT:The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978 established public ownership over records created by the executive branch to ensure permanent preservation of historically valuable materials. The law resulted from an unprecedented constitutional and political crisis spurred by the Nixon administration’s assertion of executive privilege during the Watergate investigations, a series of events that finds many similarities in the current Trump administration’s efforts to control records and information it produces. This article examines the politicization of presidential records in the intervening decades, particularly the problematic relationship between the PRA, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and executive privilege in shaping the historical record.","PeriodicalId":42337,"journal":{"name":"Information & Culture","volume":"55 1","pages":"271 - 293"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42120410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}