Crossing the boundaries in information science: Perspectives on interdisciplinarity

Abstract

Information science has often been recognized as an interdisciplinary field. The marriage between librarianship/documentation and computer science was a natural development in the United States in the post‐War period (Farkas‐Conn, 1991; Hahn & Barlow, 2012), while the development of information science in Europe has largely stayed close to the humanities and the social sciences, in particular, in relation to communication and media (Ibekwe‐SanJuan, et al., 2010). For many years, the interdisciplinary nature of information science has been applauded; until recently, we are warned that interdisciplinarinity may be harmful to the identity of the field. Buckland (2012) states that the claim of being “interdisciplinary” is to choose a position of weakness because “in times of economic crisis political power tends to reside in well‐established disciplines.” Cronin (2012) comments that “the field's sense of identity, arguably fragile at the best of times, is likely to be further weakened” for its “epistemic promiscuity.” This international panel aims to discuss the theoretical boundaries of information science in relation to disciplinarity and to the identity of information science with a special reference to the premises, promises and implications of diverging historical and contemporary traditions in different European countries and in the US. Is information science gaining strength by being more interdisciplinary or is “the basic problem for LIS seems at the moment to be a lack of sufficiently strong centripetal forces keeping the field together” as Hjørland (forthcoming) fears. Does IS risk disintegration or dilution if it is being pulled more by centrifugal forces towards neighbouring disciplines rather than by centripetal forces? Is the main problem of IS “epistemological promiscuity”? This panel will discuss how IS in their different geographical or cultural zones has grappled with these issues which are in essence issues of boundaries. In particular, we will discuss the following questions: How information science is affiliated with other disciplines (e.g. natural sciences, social sciences, or interdisciplinary fields) in different regions, countries and institutions represented by the panelists? How is interdisciplinarity perceived in the panelists' institution/country? What are the main theories, if any, that inform research in information science and the formation of research areas in different regions, countries and institutions? Why and how the identity and disciplinarity of information science matter in the context of the work of information science researchers and practitioners?

Liberating interdisciplinarity from myth. An exploration of the discursive construction of identities in information studies

“…The examples chosen are from the following three texts: Wedgeworth (), Aparac‐Jelušić et al. (), and Arafat et al. ().…”

“…Aparac‐Jelušić et al. () and Arafat et al. () are proceedings of panel presentations from ASIST 2013 and 2014, respectively.…”

“…Bibliometric research provides statistical analyses that show increases in authors' and the field's interdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity is in the DNA of the 65 iSchools. The contexts in which interdisciplinarity is found are diverse, yet mainly revolving around the identity of information studies (Aparac‐Jelušić et al., ; Arafat et al., ; Baradol & Kumbar, ; Bawden, ; Buckland, ; Cronin, , , , ; Druin et al., ; Furner, ; Holland, ; McNicol, ; Nolin & Åstrøm, ; Palmer, ; Radford, ; Saracevic, ; Sugimoto, Ni, Russell, & Bychowski, ; Webber, ; Weech & Pluzhenskaia, ; Wiegand, ; Wilson, ; Winter, ), and the iSchools and the Information Field (Beaton, Jeng, & Champagne, ; Bonnici, Subramaniam, & Burnett, ; Bonnici, Julien, & Burnett, ; Budd & Dumas, ; Burnett & Bonnici, , ; Chu, , ; Dillon, ; Gunawardena, Weber, & Agosto, ; Madsen, ; Madsen & Ho, ; Wedgeworth, ; Wiggins & Sawyer, ; Wu, He, Jiang, Dong, & Vo, ). Despite the ubiquity of interdisciplinarity in the literature, the importance of interdisciplinarity to the identity of information studies and the iSchools organization's commitment to interdisciplinarity, it is noticeable that discussions of what interdisciplinarity is and how it is practiced in research processes are scarce, and boundary work is largely ignored in the literature.…”

“…However, since Wedgeworth (), Aparac‐Jelušić et al. (), and Arafat et al. () contest the identity of information studies, there has, so far, been no fixation of meaning in the identity discussion.…”

“…The title of the panel spurred my interest, but reading the panel description puzzled me. It was not about interdisciplinarity but an invitation to “discuss the theoretical boundaries of information science” (Aparac‐Jelušić et al., , p. 1). Contrary to what one would expect judging from the title, no boundaries appeared to be crossed, and no perspectives on interdisciplinarity were offered.…”