InfoMatters

The 6th Conference on Conceptions of LIS was held in Boras, Sweden last week, hosted by the Swedish School of Library and Information Science. A more intimate affair than many such events, CoLIS had just over 100 attendees from Europe, North America and Australia and was marked by a relaxed, interactive style that maximized the sharing of perspectives. I found the conference particularly interesting in that theoretical discussions dominated and there was a comfort level with ideas, even opposing ideas, that never caused people to overheat or ignore each other. I was somewhat surprised at the amount of critical theory on display, one not terribly driven by Foucaultean concerns might have felt in a minority here, but there were enough good papers here to make the trip more productive than many other LIS conferences. I particularly enjoyed a presentation by David Bawden of City University in London who argued for a unified framework for information that broached physical, biological and human domains. Oddly, I had just raised a similar topic in my address when I pushed for the field to aim higher and ask significant, ‘big questions’ in its research (with a side-comment that we should declare a moratorium on new information seeking models). The audience responded to David’s talk enough to suggest this idea is not too worn out to be worth discussion, and indeed David made a strong case for this being an important issue for the field to address. The CoLIS papers will all find their way into a special issue of Information Research and I’ll post a link in due course. My own cleaned-up paper is in PDF form here. Next CoLIS is in London in Spring 2010 - we wouldn’t want to have too much of a good thing now would we?

I was out of the country when I learned the sad news of Ray’s death from colleagues. It’s impossible to convey in words the sadness one feels at the loss of a colleague and friend. Ray was a founding figure in the iSchool movement, urging us ever onwards to recognize the emergence of a new field that transcended the divisions of the last century. More than this, he was a lifeforce, seemingly boundlessly energized, always talking, laughing and connecting. I got to know him as a person over the last five years and always enjoyed dinner and drinks with him at conferences or meetings where we discussed travel, politics, music, and life beyond the normal matters of college business. Ray had opinions, and he was not shy about sharing them. There are many in the iSchool community who owe a dept to Ray, he was constantly concerned with the field, with developing new leaders, with ensuring the development of information as a legitimate discipline beyond his own career and his own school. That is the mark of the man, and that is his legacy to our field. You can read more about Ray’s life and leave a message of remembrance at: ischool.syr.edu/ray/about.aspx