Courtesy of Davenport and Prusak (1997)
Spring Term 2010 (CCLE Link)
Tuesday, 9AM-12:30 PM, 121 GSE&IS Bldg., West of Young Research Library
Course Description: A systematic examination of the complex interdependencies of information users with content and context. By drawing on the language of ecology, a critical examination of five major information habitats and the distribution and abundance of information objects such as comic books as well as fiction/non-fiction books, magazines and journals, movies, music, newspapers, software, and technical reports.
Learning Objectives:
1) To foster awareness about the role of information in everyday life and to think critically about the role of various formats of information (aka information objects) in specific information contexts (e.g., how people process information);
2) to give doctoral students a seminar-like experience (i.e., leading a group discussion on a topic of personal interest by preparing an outline, additional readings, and handouts or PowerPoint presentations, as appropriate;
3) to provide doctoral students a hands-on participant-observation experience with a specific information context on campus (i.e., archive, bookstore, library or, museum); and
4) to explore an information ethic (e.g., leave no footprints, take nothing but pictures circa 1970 from NPS campaign; go or be prepared, the Boy Scout motto; or treat lightly from 1971 campaign)
Class Outline and
Meetings:
I. Introduction to Information Ecology (March 30th)
a. Orientation to Course and Requirements
b. Vocabulary
i. Habitat (i.e., shelter, water and food) and Information Ecologies Using the ABC Model
ii. Rate of Dispersion (how widespread are certain species?)
iii. Latin Binominals of Linnaeus or BarCoding (see "Barcode of Life" by Gary Wolf in Wired October 2008)?
c. Questions (for Paper Topics)
i. Where are the significant energy flows (i.e., effort) in the creation of information? In the use of information? How hard or easy is it to find information?
ii. What are the major interactions? Between teachers and library media specialists (see Perrault)? Are there competitive interactions? Between bookstores and libraries?
iii. How do people process information?
iv. What are the information resources available to you?
II.
Five Common Information Habitats (April 6th)
a. Home Environment
i. Key Readings:
1. Hartel, Jenna, “Appetite for Information in the Hobby of Cooking,” Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 39 (no. 1, 2005): 547-548. (abstract)
2. Wiegand, W. “Mom and Me: A Difference in Information Values,” American Libraries 29 (August 1998): 56-58.
3. Flores, Glenn; Olson, Lynn; and Tomany-Korman, Sandy. "Does Disadvantage Start at Home? Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Early Childhood Home Routines, Safety, and Educational Practices/Resources," Academy Health Meeting (2004): 2--abstract and PowerPoint slides.
4. "The Living Room Scale (revised version of the F. Stuart Chapin scale)," In Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide through the American Status System (New York: Summit Books, 1983).
5. Keilty, Patrick, "Seeking Sex," at http://www.patrickkeilty.com/scholarly-projects
b. School (Public/Private) Environment
i. Key Readings:
1. Anne Marie Perrault, “The School as an Information Ecology: A Framework for Studying Changes in Information Use,” School Libraries Worldwide 13 (no. 2, July 2007): 49-62. (Abstract)
2. Jeremy Iversen, High School Confidential: Secrets of an Undercover Student (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007).
c. University (Public/Private) Environment (size, divisions, opening day collections)
i. Key Readings:
1. Wade R. Kotter, Review of “The Ecology of Information Work: A Case Study of Bridging Archaeological Work and Virtual Reality Based Knowledge Organization,” College & Research Libraries 69 (no. 1, January 2008): 84-87.
2. Labaree, Robert V. "Encounters with the Library: Understanding Experience Using the Life History Method," Library Trends 55 (Summer 2006): 121-139.
3. Suarez, Doug, "What Students Do When They Study in the Library: Using Ethnographic Methods to Observe Student Behavior," Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship 8 (no.3, 2007): online.
4. Rebekah Nathan, My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned By Becoming A Student (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
5. Walter Scott, "The Library as Ecosystem," Library Journal (1 October 2008): 28-30.
d. Work Environment
i. Key Readings:
1. Cynthia A. Steinke, Information Seeking and Communicating Behavior of Scientists and Engineers (New York: Haworth Press, 1991).
2. Elizabeth W. Morrison and Thomas E. Pinelli, NASA DoD Knowledge Diffusion Project: Factors Motivating and Impeding Information Seeking by Early Career-Stage Engineers and Scientists. NASA TM 110213. Washington, DC: NTIS, July 1996.
3. Harriet Rubin, "What CEO's Book Collection Says About Them, International Herald Tribune, 20 July 2007: online.
e. Leisure Environment (i.e., Use of Time)
i. Key Readings:
1. Jenna Hartel, “Information Activities, Resources, & Spaces in the Hobby of Gourmet Cooking,” PhD Dissertation, UCLA, 2007.
2. Benjamin Brigham and Justin
Perron, “Information-Seeking Behavior
in Recreational Planning: An
exploratory study of recreational travelers.” Seattle, WA; UW
iSchool, 2004.
3. Chien-Hsiang Yu, "A Study of Information
Activities and Resources of Breeders during the Processes of Cat
Breeding", MA Thesis, Department of Information and Communications at SH
University (Taiwan), 2008.
4. US Department of Labor Statistics.
"American Time Use Study:" [On An Average American Day]"
Washington, DC; GPO, 2006. (charts)
f.
Participant-Observer
(or other techniques) Opportunity on Campus to observe:
what do you see and why? (April 13th)
i.
Archive
ii.
Bookstore
iii.
Library
iv.
Museum
III.
Information
Objects (class sessions alternate with student led seminars)
a. Comic Books (April 20th)
i.
History
of "juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended
to convey information and/or produce an aesthetic response in the viewer,"
p. 9 of McCloud)
ii.
Key
Questions: Why is this format considered
trash? Or, contemptible? "If you've read and collected comic books, did
you ever suspect that they were censored? How important is sex and violence in
a comic book? Do you think there is more sex and violence in comic books
today?"
iii.
Key
Concepts: Comics Code
Authority (CCA, 1954); Manga (whimsical pictures); and Graphic Novels.
iv.
Key
Readings:
v.
Scott
McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993) and Making Comics:
Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels (2006).
vi.
John
Carlin, Paul Karasik, Brian Walker, Stanley Crouch, Masters
of American Comics: Los Angeles: Hammer Museum/Yale University Press, 2005.
vii.
David
Hajdu, The
Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.
viii.
(In
Chinese): Nei-Ching Yeh, "A Study on the Meaning of Comics to the
Undergraduate," Journal of Information, Communication and Library
Science 6 (no. 1, Fall 1999): 33-47.
b.
Newspapers (April 27th)--guest lecturer,
Chris Woodyard, Reporter on Money Section, USA Today (recent articles)
and past President and Director, LA Press Club
i.
Key
Questions: What is the future for this format, given that there is no national
discussion or debate (i.e., polarization)? How has Craig's List or Monster.com changed the newspapers' business
model? Given the importance of timeliness, can newspapers survive as an online source rather a print-based medium?
What is the difference between Foxnews.com
and MSNBC.com? Or, should newspapers be
considered a rare and endangered species of information and/or likely to be
extirpated in the near term?
ii.
Key
Concepts: Times New Roman type fount; column inches, Audit Bureau of
Circulations (ABC, Fall 2008))
iii.
Key
Readings:
1. “Newspapers" at newspapers180.ppt and Fall
2008 student presentation
2. Google's News Archive and Yahoo! News
3. Philip Meyer, The
Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age. Columbia,
MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004
4. Xigen Li, Internet
Newspapers: Making of a Mainstream Medium. New York: Routledge, 2005.
5. J.V. Singh, Review of Publish and Perish: The Organizational Ecology of Newspaper Industries by G. Carroll, Administrative Science Quarterly 33 (no.2, 1988): 319-323.
6. A. Karl and J. McKerns, "The Social Ecology of the Newspaper," Presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Corvallis, Oregon, 6-9 August 1983.
c.
Books (i.e., Monographs) (May 4th) At
10AM meet in Smith Room of Special Collections YRL at 10:30 AM after Student
Seminar on Comics
i.
Key
Questions: What’s the typical size of a personal library in the US? In Europe?
Elsewhere? What constitutes
copyright and “fair use”—i.e., purpose, nature, amount, and effect? What’s the near term future of the
codex? Do eBooks, such as Amazon’s
Kindle™, have a future?
ii.
Concepts:
boustrophedonic,
codex versus scroll, format (e.g., folio, quarto, octavo), verso and recto; page
versus leaf as well as pagination and foliation, colophon, title page, imprint
information
iii.
Key
Questions: Why doesn't the scroll exist today as a viable information object?
When did title pages, page numbers come into common use? When did indexes appear? For the Bible,
chapter and verse?
iv.
Key
Readings:
1. “Introducing the Book”
(2007) or
2. “Book Help”
(2007)
3. Jascha Hoffman, "Comparative Literature
[statistics on number of books published, translations, international
megasellers]," New York Times Book Review 15 April 2007: 27 (pdf).
d.
Technical Reports (May 11th) and Student
Seminar on Books, Physicality, and Intellectual Property
i.
Key
Questions: why is this format so hard to
find in a bookstore, library or online?
ii.
Key
Concepts: copyright exceptions (17
U.S.C. 105); CFDA; research and development; government grants and contracts; report number; Publications
Board then NTIS, 15 U.S.C. 1151-1157;
compare to government's science portal; microformats (e.g., fiche,
i.e., SRIM), film (e.g.,
16 or 35mm), and ultrafiche) and reduction ratio standards
iii.
Key
Readings:
1. Tim Byrne, “‘Available from NTIS’ and Other
Technical Report Horror Stories,” DttP 35 (no. 2, Summer 2007): 51-2.
2. Mary G. Chitty, "NTIS:
Concept of the Clearinghouse, 1945-1979," MA Thesis, University of
North Carolina, March 1979.
3. Jose Marie Griffiths; Bonnie C. Carroll and
Martha Williams, "Dissemination of Scientific and Technical Information
Dissemination in the United States: Report on an NSF Sponsored Study." Proceedings
of the 54th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science,
Washington, DC, October 31, 1991
e. Magazines and
Journals (i.e., Periodicals or Serials) (May 11th) and
Student Seminar on Movies and Technical Reports ("Use and Value")
i.
Key Questions:
What role might open-access journals play in the future? What’s “fair
use” when it comes to an article? What
are the top circulating magazines? What
insight into popular culture might this information reveal?
Who is willing to read this format online?
ii.
Key
Concepts: periodicals and serials; popular and scholarly; peer reviewed; single
versus double blind refereeing; ILL; ejournals
iii.
Key
Readings:
1. Amy S. Pattee, “Mass Market Mortification:
The Developmental Appropriateness of Teen Magazines and the Embarrassing Story
Standard,” The Library Quarterly 74 (January 2004): 1-20. (Abstract)
2. Christine L. Borgman, Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure,
and the Internet. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2007.
f.
Music (May 18th) and Student
Seminar on Magazines (see Julian Tu 2008 presentation)
i.
Key
Questions: Why does music exist?
Can music be defined as beat/rhythm
(timing), melody (pitch and
timbre), mode, tone, tempo (speed/pace) and lyrics
(meaning)? What makes a music genre popular?
What are the most
popular albums or top-selling
records? What are the sources for downloading music (e.g., online networks,
online forums/chat and communities, friends)? What are the risks for users? Are
users concerned about these risks? Does
the moral economy apply here? Are fair use concerns different for this format;
for instance, what’s the proper role of sampling?
ii.
Key
Concepts: The Digital Millennium
Copyright Act of 1998; rights (e.g., ASCAP;
BMI); musical genres;
formats (such as 78, 33 1/3, 45s, reel-to-reel magnetic tape, 8-track,
cassette, and CD), lossy
or lossless compression, MP3
and AAC), iPods; Peer-to-Peer
(P2P) subscription services (e.g., iTunes, Rhapsody, Music Match and Napster), RIAA (gold,
platinum and diamond records), Parental Advisory labels, and Music Industry Piracy
Investigations
iii.
Key
Readings:
1. Elliot, David J., “Music as
Knowledge,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 25 (no. 3, 1991): 21-40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3332993?origin=JSTOR-pdf
2.
Semrow, Robert. “Plug in: Information Society” http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:iimp:&rft_dat=xri:iimp:article:citation:iimp00047169
(1997)
3.
Webster, Peter, “Historical Perspectives on Technology and
Music,” Music
Education Journal 89 (no. 1, 2002): 38-43.
4.
Chaffee, Steven H.
“Popular Music and Communication Research,” Communication
Research 12 (no. 2, 1985): 413-424 at http://crx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/3/413.
5.
Azenha, Gustavo S. “The Internet and Decentralisation
of the Popular Music Industry: Critical Reflections on Technology,
Concentration and Diversification,” Radical Musicology 1 (2006): http://www.radical-musicology.org.uk/2006/Azenha.htm
6. Stokes, Martin. “Music and the
Global Order,” Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004): 47-72. http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev.anthro.33.070203.143916?cookieSet=1
7. Singer,
Mark. "Letter from England--Piano for Fantasia: Joyce Hatto's Incredible
Career," New Yorker (17 September 2007): online.
8. Patel, Aniruddh D. Music, Language, and the
Brain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
9. Liew,
Chern Li.; and Ng, Siong Ngor, "Beyond the Notes: A Qualitative Study of
the Information-Seeking Behavior of Ethnomusicologists," Journal of
Academic Librarianship 32 (January 2006): 60-68.
10. Steve
Knopper, Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record
Industry in the Digital Age (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
g.
Movies and Software (i.e., video games) (May
25th) and Student Seminar (see Emilyan's Music
and Efimova's Music
i.
Key
Questions: What are the all-time
top 100 movies? The AMPAS's
best movies ever? Top grossing
movies? Can movie preferences be predicted? Is there such a thing as
cyberculture? What role does the Usenet play? For collectors, do they care
about infinite variants and/or what defines complete or canonical? Is it true:
"More than 85 percent of the people with high-speed connections are
downloading movies illegally."
ii.
Key
Concepts: DVD, Blu-Ray disc,
region codes, EFF
and DMCA; Netflix's Cinematch;
banner ads; click-thru
rate/payments; file extensions (such as CSV format, Phil Katz's .zip data
compression, and Eugene Roshal's .rar) and checksum, censorship versus self
regulation; MPAA ratings—X
(pornography--hard-core or soft-core versus erotica), NC-17, PG-13, and G; US
Conference of Catholic Bishops ratings of A-I, A-II, A-III, L, and O;
FTP; piracy/anti-piracy; mIRC; 2600; crack; keygen; Warez; zero days.
iii.
Key
Readings:
1. “Warez
World Pathfinder No. 933, The online community of software thieves” (2001).
2. Resource
Center for Cyberculture Study (Seattle: University of Washington).
3. Clive Thompson, "If You Liked This,
You're Sure to Love That," New York Times Magazine, 23 November
2008, pages 74-79.
4. Business
Software Alliance and the SIAA's SPA
Anti-Piracy
IV.
Student Seminar on Movies (see piracy
and movies presentations) and Conclusions (June
1st)
a. Student Insights into the Information Ecology
of specific environments
b. Informal Presentations of Student Papers (see
requirements below)
c.
Class Evaluations
Course Requirements
and Due Dates:
1)
Write a brief double-spaced paper with bibliographic
citations to relevant literature on an specific information habitat for an
environment such as work, school, or home setting or leisure setting (see
model below). Grading: Click on habitat above for some definitions; the more
detail relevant to information seeking, the better. Identify all of the relevant
habitats; then, try to nest the habitats and consider your primary habitat
to other habitats. Diagrams might be useful. Structure of information habitat
is primary before trying to state the functional information needs of a habitat.
Notes and references in a consistent house style (such as CMS, MLA, or PA)
are a bonus. First draft due on 6th April and final version on 13th April.
20% of final grade.
2)
Observe a campus archive, bookstore, library,
or museum. Write a brief paper (5 pages
or less) about your observations of information-seeking (using the A,B, C models). Without being too obtrusive, what can you discern
about people’s information needs? Grading: description is good (B), comparison
and contrast (B+), synthesis (A-), and evaluation/testing of hypothesis (A).
You can approach this assignment deductively or inductively,
or better check out IS 280 "Social Science Research Methodology," since the objective is to test or generate a strong thesis or hypothesis (i.e., observe a relationship).
Due 20th April. 20% of final grade.
3)
Lead one class session on an information object
of your choice (see sections above) by preparing an outline, potential questions,
additional readings, handouts and PowerPoint presentations, as appropriate.
Identify preference and instructor will assign due date. 20% of final
grade.
4)
Write a publishable research paper (roughly 20-30 pages) on some aspect of information ecology or write a brief (less than 10) page end-term paper
with references (footnotes/notes and bibliography) on what it is like to be
a particular information object (e.g., book, comic, journal article, movie
DVD, music CD, newspaper, or other format discussed in class). Notes and references in a consistent house style
(such as CMS, MLA, or PA) are required. Grading:
description is good (B), comparison and contrast (B+), synthesis (A-), and
evaluation (A). Due last class session: 1 June. 30% of final grade.
5)
Class
attendance and contributions to discussions will be considered in your final
grade. 10% of final grade.
Suggested Course
Textbooks:
Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak, Information
Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Donald O. Case, Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior. New York: Academic Press/Elsevier Science, 2002.
An Information Habitat for a UCLA Student:
You are a student--an individual species in the population of UG (four classes,
divided into lower and upper divisions, who are here to learn general as well
as more specialized knowledge in their majors) and professional and graduate
students (who are taking courses and exams to demonstrate mastery of some
branch of knowledge, or who are advanced to candidacy and working on their
dissertations which will be original, substantive and independent contributions
to knowledge; this group may also include post-docs and visiting scholars),
who are part of the community of students, staff (of various types including
administrative assistants and student affairs officers who need to know university
rules and regulations), and faculty (including lecturers and those with security
of employment), visiting, adjunct as well as professors (i.e., assistant,
associate, and full professors who are responsible for imparting old as well
as creating new knowledge), and visitors (local, national, or international)
to UCLA who are curious about this place, who are in turn, part of the HE
ecosystem of the state’s tripartite landscape of community colleges, colleges
(i.e., one of the CSU’s) or one of the ten California Universities in the
western region of the United States (on planet earth).
SOURCES: See above.
Created: 11 May 2008;
revised, 1 June 2010.