All SIS doctoral students and faculty are invited to the DLIS Doctoral Colloquium.

When: Friday, March 19, 12 noon - 1 pm
Where: 1st Floor Conference Room, IS Building
Who: Dr. Richard J. Cox and Lingling Lillian Lai

I. What Is Past Is Prologue: New and Needed Research in Archival Studies

Dr. Richard J. Cox

Abstract: Archivists and archives have been around since the ancient world.  The modern archival community and its professional literature date back to the late nineteenth century.  Graduate programs in archival studies have been in existence only since the 1970s.  As a result, research on archival topics remains rather underdeveloped, with most of the critical work having been done in the past twenty or so years.  This talk will provide a brief overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the research literature in archival studies, consider the speaker's own research interests and activities, and describe the recent work of his doctoral students in the area of accountability, public memory, and accountability.

About the Speaker: Richard J. Cox is Professor in Library and Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Sciences. Dr. Cox served as Editor of the American Archivist from 1991 through 1995, and he is presently editor of the Records & Information Management Report as well as serving as the Society of American Archivists Publications Editor. He has written extensively on archival and records management topics and has published eleven books in this area: American Archival Analysis: The Recent Development of the Archival Profession in the United States (1990) -- winner of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award given by the Society of American Archivists; Managing Institutional Archives: Foundational Principles and Practices (1992); The First Generation of Electronic Records Archivists in the United States: A Study in Professionalization (1994); Documenting Localities (1996); Closing an Era: Historical Perspectives on Modern Archives and Records Management (2000); Managing Records as Evidence and Information (2001), winner of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award in 2002; co-editor, Archives & the Public Good: Records and Accountability in Modern Society (2002); Vandals in the Stacks? A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries (2002); Flowers After the  Funeral: Reflections on the Post-9/11 Digital Age (2003); No Innocent Deposits: Forming Archives by Rethinking Appraisal (2004); and Lester J. Cappon and Historical Scholarship in the Golden Age of Archival Theory (forthcoming in 2004).

II. Knowledge Organization in Consulting Firms

Lingling Lillian Lai

Abstract: Organizing corporate knowledge is critical for corporations to have effective and successful knowledge management. However, the knowledge management literature was found to be lacking in attention to frameworks of knowledge organization. From the viewpoint of library and information science, which has a long history of organizing world knowledge, this study investigates current practices of how IT consultants in consulting firms organize corporate knowledge. In particular, this study analyzes the methods of knowledge organization used by IT consultants in Taiwan in order to discover patterns and characteristics of organizing corporate knowledge. In order to explore the view and experience of IT consultants, it is most suitable to use a qualitative approach in this dissertation research. The study shows that the way IT consultants describe a knowledge object resembles what librarians have been doing for centuries. The organization of corporate knowledge is greatly impacted by how the collection of knowledge assets is being described. Particularly, the multi-faceted view of a knowledge object brings the researcher's attention to the notion of Faceted Classification that was originated in the field of library and information science. In addition, subject analysis is found to be related to the categorization of knowledge assets in the practice of organizing knowledge. A standardized organization scheme of a knowledge object is also influential for IT consultants' use of a knowledge management system.