UNIVERSITY
OF PITTSBURGH
SCHOOL OF INFORMATION SCIENCES
Fall 2002 Term
| LIS 2000 | Understanding Information |
| Instructor: | Richard J. Cox, Professor |
| Office Number: | SIS 648 |
| Telephone: | 412-624-3245 |
| E-mail: | rcox@mail.sis.pitt.edu |
| Homepage: | http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~rcox |
| Office Hours: | Tuesday 1:30-4:30 and by appointment. |
COURSE PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES. As one of the
required MLIS courses, Understanding
Information provides an appreciation of the underlying issues, debates, and
factors defining the nature of information and the implications of these
matters for the information professions.
Information is a good (or commodity or resource) filling personal,
organizational, and societal needs.
Information is also organized and made available through complex
information handling systems.
Information also comes to individuals, organizations, and society
through a variety of means. And, issues
and problems arise from inter-relationships between information and
individuals, society, organizations and systems, information technology, and
the information professions.
This
course is intended to provide students knowledge about the responsibilities
held by the information professions, but mostly this course is intended to
assist students to comprehend the complexities of information in modern society
and how the various notions of information affect or should affect the work of
any information professional. The
course is also intended to provide a theoretical and historical basis for the
basic MLIS curriculum by helping students explore what information has been
seen to mean by different groups and in different epochs.
Course
objectives include defining the nature of information, providing historic
background on the nature of information systems, orienting students to concepts
of information systems, integrating views of the physical and virtual library
and other information providers, orienting students to technology issues
related to information systems, making students aware of professional issues,
making students aware of human factors influencing information systems,
providing an orientation to information services, and providing an awareness of
social, economic, political, and other issues affecting information systems.
REQUIRED BOOK PURCHASES. This
course is built around readings of a number of key or representative books
published about the nature of information from a wide variety of
perspectives. The books are intended to
help students reflect on a variety of issues concerning society’s and various
disciplines’ “understanding” of information.
These
books are available in bookstores such as Borders or Barnes and Noble; students
may save money by purchasing books through one of the Internet bookstores, such
as http://www.amazon.com. Students are
encouraged to make these purchases in order to build up personal libraries for
their continuing work as information professionals. Students will also find it easier to complete the course if they
have the books readily available for consultation. All of the readings are on reserve at the SIS Library.
READINGS. The readings included in this syllabus have been kept to a
minimum. However, the Instructor will
make references to additional readings -- seminal writings, research,
representative treatises, and controversial arguments – during each
lecture. Students are encouraged to
take individual initiative to read reviews, critical assessments, and other
professional and scholarly treatments of the assigned readings or to read
related studies by other authors.
CRITICAL WRITING ASSIGNMENT. Students will be
required to write a major paper of twenty to twenty-five pages concerning any
of the primary topics or themes in this course, depending on the instructor’s
approval. The essays should reflect the student's critical evaluation of the
assigned readings, his or her own reflections on the topics, and the student's
rumination about the issues being considered (as well as following the
guidelines described in the instructions for each assignment).
Each
student is expected to conduct additional research about their topic,
evaluating relevant professional, research, and historical literature. The
essays should be well written, word-processed, and handed in at the beginning of
the class session fourteen (the last week of the class). Any paper handed in late will automatically
have one letter grade deducted. Since information professionals must possess
the ability to think critically, write well, and deal with complex and confusing
issues, this writing assignment will constitute three-quarters of the student’s
grade. The remaining one-quarter of the
grade will be based on class participation, including both classroom discussion
and individual meetings with the instructor.
Students are free to purpose topics
of interest to them and related to the theme of understanding information. Ideally, students should select a topic
related to their areas of specialization or career objectives.
If
a student has no specific idea, then they could do an analysis of some recent
or continuing event as it is covered in the print and electronic news
media. Each student could select a
daily, weekly, or monthly print newspaper or news magazine with a national
focus (such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Christian
Science Monitor, USA Today, Time, the Economist, or Newsweek)
and evaluate coverage of a particular issue to reflect the image or concept of
information as displayed in the publication.
How is information about various topics described? What is the image of information
professionals (if there is any image)?
How does the intended audience of the publication impact on how
information is portrayed? Students should then consider the differences and
similarities on one story as covered by the print and electronic sources. For example, is the electronic information
on the continuing controversy about American tobacco companies’ litigation more
complete, timely, and accessible on the Web than that provided by a major daily
newspaper or weekly newsmagazine?
Another
possible approach to a writing assignment for this course would be the
preparation of an essay looking at one major scholar who has contributed to our
understanding of information. The paper
should draw on the individual’s writings, reviews of his or her work, and
assessments in the appropriate scholarly and professional literature. Each student can select, with the
Instructor’s permission, an individual of interest to him or her. However, here are suggestions for beginning
to think about a subject: Daniel Bell, Sven Bierkerts, Stewart Brand, Michael
Buckland, Vannevar Bush, Roger Chartier, Esther Dyson, George Gilder, Jack
Goody, Ivan Illich, Michael Heim, Clifford Lynch, Fritz Machlup, William J.
Mitchell, Nicholas Negroponte, Arnold Penzias, Marc Porat, Neil Postman, Barry
Sanders, Jesse Shera, Clifford Stoll, Don Tapscott, Alvin Toffler, Edward R.
Tufte, and JoAnne Yates. These
individuals range from the information sciences to the humanities.
Students
could select how information has been portrayed by a particular part of our
society or could select and evaluate the work of a futurist who has described
the future impact of information technologies or could select a seminal work
and examine how it has been cited and discussed within the information and
other disciplines. Examples of seminal writings on information include James R.
Beniger, The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the
Information Society (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1986); Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to
Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Harper Colophon, 1961); and Frederick
P. Brooks, Jr., The Mythical
Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering; Anniversary Edition. (Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1995). Examples of information futurists include John Brockman, Digerati:
Encounters with the Cyber Elite (San Francisco: HardWired, 1996); Michael
L. Dertouzos, What Will Be: How the New World of Information Will Change Our
Lives (San Francisco: HarperEdge, 1997); Esther Dyson, Release 2.0: A
Design for Living in the Digital Age (New York: Broadway Books, 1997); Ray
Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human
Intelligence (New York: Viking,
1999); and William J. Mitchell, City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995).
Students
might also take a particular type of information source and examine how an
analysis of this type of source might help us better understand
information. Examples of particular
types of information sources that could be studied include advertising (Stuart
and Elizabeth Ewen, Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of
American Consciousness [New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1982]);
architecture (Ada Louise Huxtable, The Unreal America: Architecture and
Illusion [New York: The New Press, 1997]); book (Robert Darnton, The
Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France [New York: W. W. Norton
and Co., 1995]); calendar (David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory
and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England [Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989]); clocks (Gerhard, Dohrn-van Rossum, History
of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders, trans. Thomas Dunlap
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996]); institutions such as museums
(Andrea Stulman Dennett, Weird & Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America
[New York: New York University Press, 1997] or Richard Handler and Eric
Gable, The New History in an Old
Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg [Durham: Duke University Press, 1997]); language (Robin Dunbar,
Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language [London: Faber and Faber,
1996]); news (Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening
News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time [New York: Vintage Books,
1980]); photography (such as John Collier, Jr., and Malcolm Collier, Visual
Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method, rev. and expanded ed. [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1986]); popular culture (John Fiske, Reading the Popular (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989)];
quantification (such as Alfred W. Crosby, The Measure of Reality:
Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600 [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997]; reference works (Jonathan Green, Jonathon Chasing
the Sun: Dictionary Makers and the Dictionaries They Made [New York: Henry
Holt and Co., 1996]); and writing (Henri-Jean Martin, The History and Power
of Writing, trans. Lydia G.
Cochrane [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994]).
Each
paper ought to include relevant citations, following the current Chicago
Manual of Style. Students need to
hand in a one-page description of their subject by week four of the class; the
Instructor will inform the student as quickly as possible of approval of the
choice. The paper is due on the thirteenth class.
CLASS DISCUSSIONS. During each week, the second half of the
class time will be devoted to class discussions, drawing on the readings,
students’ career objectives and interests, and perspectives from a variety of
information providers such as the public library, archives, and the academic
library.
GRADING FOR THE COURSE. Three quarters of
the grade will be based on the student’s written assignment. The remainder of the course grade will be
based on the student’s participation in the class.
Week One (8/28/02). Orientation to the Course; Review of the Syllabus; Introduction of Students
Read and
be ready to discuss Henry Petroski, The
Book on the Bookshelf (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) or Sven
Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies:
The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1994).
Read
and be ready to discuss Timothy Garton Ash, The File: A Personal History (New York: Random House, 1997).
One page description of topic for
major paper is due at week four class session.
Week Five (9/25/02). The Newspaper
Read and
be ready to discuss Nicholson Baker, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault
on Paper (New York: Random House, 2001).
Week Six (10/2/02). The Movie
Read
and be ready to discuss Robert Brent Toplin, History by Hollywood: The Use
and Abuse of the American Past (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1996).
There will be no class on 10/9/02
Read
and be ready to discuss Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1995).
Read
and be ready to discuss Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone: Public Monuments
in Changing Societies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
Week Nine (10/30/02) The Landscape
Read
and be ready to discuss John R. Stilgoe, Outside Lies Magic: Regaining
History and Awareness in Everyday Places (New York: Walker and Co., 1998).
Week Ten
(11/6/02) The Building
Read
and be ready to discuss Witold Rybczynski, Looking Around: A Journey Through
Architecture (New York: Penguin Books, 1992).
Week Eleven (11/13/02) The Map
Read and
be ready to discuss Simon Winchester The Map That Changed the World: William
Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology (New York: HarperCollins, 2001).
Read
and be ready to discuss Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar,
Straus, Giroux, 1978).
There is no class on 11/27/02 – Have a Nice Thanksgiving
Week Thirteen (12/4/02)
The Web Site
Read and be ready to discuss David
Weinberger, Small Pieces Loosely Joined (A Unified Theory of the Web)
(New York: Perseus Publishing, 2002).
There is no required reading for
this week.
Major paper is due on week
fourteen class session.