UCLA Information Studies Department

Christine Borgman, Professor & Presidential Chair in Information Studies will lecture as part of The Jacob Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavior Sciences at UCLA.

Scholarship in the Digital Age:
Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet

Abstract
Scholarship in the digital age is character...ized by data-intensive, information-intensive, distributed, interdisciplinary, collaborative research. Scholars in all fields are taking advantage of new sources of data and new means to publish and distribute their work online. Content in digital form, whether text from digitized books or data from embedded sensor networks, can be mined to ask new questions, in new ways. However, the practices, products, and sources of data vary widely between disciplines. Some fields are more advantaged than others by the array of content now online and by the tools and services available to use it. As readers, scientists have access to the greatest depth of their literature online, but their use is most concentrated on recent publications. Conversely, humanists’ reading habits cover the longest time span of publications, yet they have the least depth of coverage online. As researchers, scientists generate most of the data they use, while humanists draw heavily on cultural artifacts and other sources that they neither own nor control. Social scientists occupy the midpoint on both of these dimensions. This talk will provide an overview of new developments in scholarly information infrastructure, including policy issues such as open access and intellectual property, drawn from the author’s recent book of this title. The intersection of digital scholarship and cyberlearning also will be addressed briefly, drawn from the NSF Task Force Report, Fostering Learning in the Networked World.

Biographical statement
Christine L. Borgman is Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA. She is the author of more than 180 publications in the fields of information studies, computer science, and communication. Both of her sole-authored monographs, Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet (MIT Press, 2007) and From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access to Information in a Networked World (MIT Press, 2000), have won the Best Information Science book of the year award from the American Society for Information Science and Technology. She is a lead investigator for the Center for Embedded Networked Systems (CENS), a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center, where she conducts data practices research. She chaired the Task Force on Cyberlearning for the NSF, whose report was released in July, 2008. Prof. Borgman is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the US National Academies’ Board on Research Data and Information.
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Johanna Drucker, the inaugural holder of the Bernard and Martin Breslauer Professorship of Bibliography at UCLA, will speak on "Biblio+Info: How can the legacy of book culture and the emerging scene of information environments best engage in a mutually informing dialogue?"

Abstract:

In this talk, ideas about the book as ...an information device designed for use is brought to bear on considerations of the design of digital environments. In turn, reflections on what a book is and does are brought into focus through the insights gained in thinking about the demands of digital tools and electronic spaces. The larger question guiding this talk is research into the book as a space of diagrammatic interpretation based on a cognitive studies approach to knowledge production.

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