Back to the fundamentals again

Information and the understanding of objective knowledge: a phenomenological study

Purpose

This study aims to investigate how understanding of objective knowledge (as defined by Karl Popper) is experienced by the knowledge recipient and the role that information plays in such understanding.

Design/methodology/approach

Husserl's phenomenological approach is applied to a sample of undergraduate students' lived experiences of understanding, collected through diaries and interviews.

Findings

This study finds that understanding of certain objective knowledge develops as the knowledge appears and eventually gives itself to consciousness through the information conveying it; different degrees of givenness of the knowledge in consciousness is experienced by the mind as different levels of understanding; a relatively solid understanding is achieved when the knowledge emerges as an erected knowledge-object in consciousness. Understanding of complex objective knowledge requires not only adequate amount (dose) of information but also corroboration of manifold information sources and formats.

Research limitations/implications

The findings of this study apply to the understanding of objective knowledge as defined by Popper. Further research is needed to examine other types of understanding.

Practical implications

This study informs educators and LIS professionals the typical phases in the lived experience of understanding objective knowledge, and the role of information in facilitating the understanding; it urges the two professions to take such experience into consideration when designing courses and information products/services, respectively.

Originality/value

Drawing on Husserl's phenomenological approach, this study provides an intuitive account of understanding of objective knowledge, and clarifies a number of conceptual confusions within LIS concerning understanding. It may also have some cross-disciplinary relevance for reflecting education objectives and explaining the Aha! experience in psychology.

Quality of Open Research Data: Values, Convergences and Governance

This paper focuses on the characteristics of research data quality, and aims to cover the most important issues related to it, giving particular attention to its attributes and to data governance. The corporate word’s considerable interest in the quality of data is obvious in several thoughts and issues reported in business-related publications, even if there are apparent differences between values and approaches to data in corporate and in academic (research) environments. The paper also takes into consideration that addressing data quality would be unimaginable without considering big data.

Information and contemplation: a call for reflection and action

Purpose

Americans increasingly feel a sense of wonder at the universe; meditation and yoga are on the rise; and a field known as Contemplative Studies has emerged. These indicators, among others, suggest a groundswell of interest in contemplative practice and contemplative experience and raise intriguing questions for information and Information Studies. Against this backdrop, this paper asks: How might Information Studies contribute to these developments? What is the relationship between information and contemplation? What can be explored on this research frontier?

Design/methodology/approach

This conceptual paper is based upon a synthesis of recent writings from the field of Contemplative Studies as well as conceptual analysis of selected papers and themes in Information Studies. It draws from discussion that occurred at a Session for Interaction and Engagement at the 2018 iConference, entitled “Contemplating Information in the Pleasurable and the Profound” (Latham et al., 2018). The authors' creative thinking and personal contemplative practices also infuse and fortify the work.

Findings

Popular and academic contemplative movements are afoot, and Information Studies has an opportunity to participate or be left behind. The field of Contemplative Studies has established the foundational concepts that can serve as contextual material for information research into contemplation. Upon closer inspection, Information Studies has already broached the topic of contemplation at various points in its history, theory, institutional practices, and information behavior research. The conceptual points of departure for a research frontier are articulated.

Originality/value

Beyond data, information, and knowledge are deeper and more profound aims, such as wisdom, which is related to contemplation. This paper supplies a rationale, scholarly community, conceptual resources, historical precedents, and guiding questions for bridging information and contemplation.

A structure–agency integrative framework for information access disparity

Purpose

This study aims to build an integrative framework for explaining society's information access disparity, which takes both structure and agency as well as their interactions into consideration.

Design/methodology/approach

It adopts a qualitative survey design. It collects data on the development of 65 individuals' information access through interviews, and analyzes the data following grounded theory principles.

Findings

A theoretical framework is established based on seven constructs and their relationships, all emerging from the empirical data. It rediscovers practice as the primary structural force shaping individuals' information access, hence society's information access disparity; it shows, meanwhile, that the effect of practice is mediated and/or interrupted by four agentic factors: affective responses to a practice, strategic move between practices, experiential returns of information, and quadrant state of mind.

Research limitations/implications

It urges LIS researchers to go beyond the embedded information activities to examine both the embedded and embedding, beyond actions to examine both actions and experiences.

Practical implications

It calls for information professionals to take a critical stance toward the practices they serve and partake in their reforms from an LIS perspective.

Originality/value

The framework provides an integrative and novel explanation for information access disparity; it adds a number of LIS-relevant concepts to the general practice theories, highlighting the significance of embedded information activities in any practice and their reverberations; it also appears able to connect a range of human-related LIS theories and pinpoint their gaps.

A hierarchical typology of scholarly information units: based on a deduction-verification study

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to lay a theoretical foundation for identifying operational information units for library and information professional activities in the context of scholarly communication.

Design/methodology/approach

The study adopts a deduction-verification approach to formulate a typology of units for scholarly information. It first deduces possible units from an existing conceptualization of information, which defines information as the combined product of data and meaning, and then tests the usefulness of these units via two empirical investigations, one with a group of scholarly papers and the other with a sample of scholarly information users.

Findings

The results show that, on defining an information unit as a piece of information that is complete in both data and meaning, to such an extent that it remains meaningful to its target audience when retrieved and displayed independently in a database, it is then possible to formulate a hierarchical typology of units for scholarly information. The typology proposed in this study consists of three levels, which in turn, consists of 1, 5 and 44 units, respectively.

Research limitations/implications

The result of this study has theoretical implications on both the philosophical and conceptual levels: on the philosophical level, it hinges on, and reinforces the objective view of information; on the conceptual level, it challenges the conceptualization of work by IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records and Library Reference Model but endorses that by Library of Congress’s BIBFRAME 2.0 model.

Practical implications

It calls for reconsideration of existing operational units in a variety of library and information activities.

Originality/value

The study strengthens the conceptual foundation of operational information units and brings to light the primacy of “one work” as an information unit and the possibility for it to be supplemented by smaller units.

Exploring Whether Data Can be Represented as a Composite Unit in Form Processing Using the Manufacturing of Information Approach

Data and information quality have been recognized as essential components for improving business efficiency. One approach for the assessment of information quality (IQ) is the manufacturing of information (MI). So far, research using this approach has considered a whole document as one indivisible block, which allows document evaluation only at a general level. However, the data inside the documents can be represented as components, which can further be classified according to content and composition. In this paper, we propose a novel model to explore the effectiveness of representing data as a composite unit, rather than indivisible blocks. The input data sufficiency and the relevance of the information output are evaluated in the example of analyzing an administrative form. We found that the new streamlined form proposed resulted in a 15% improvement in IQ. Additionally, we found the relationship between the data quantity and IQ was not a “simple” correlation, as IQ may increase without a corresponding increase in data quantity. We conclude that our study shows that the representation of data as a composite unit is a determining factor in IQ assessment.

Library and information science and the digital humanities

Purpose

– Library and information science (LIS) and the digital humanities are both interested in studying recorded information and often share institutional frameworks. The purpose of this paper is to go beyond outlining these similarities by examining the perceived and real strengths and weaknesses of both disciplines.

Design/methodology/approach

– Epistemologies and methods of both disciplines are analysed, principally in the light of the growing importance of data-intensive research, taking into consideration that there is a tension about the academic status of these disciplines.

Findings

– Epistemologies and methods of both disciplines are analysed, principally in the light of the growing importance of data-intensive research, taking into consideration that there is a tension about the academic status of these disciplines.

Originality/value

– The paper intends to be an add-on to the recent discussions and the evolving body of knowledge about the relationship of these disciplines with the hope of indicating a possible new direction in the development of LIS.