Editor's Desktop
Irene L. Travis, Editor
Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Bulletin@asis.org
For this issue’s special section Guest Editor Glynn Harmon has
put together a series of reports and observations from some of the deans and
faculty closely involved in organizing the First I-Conference of the I-School
Deans’ Community, which was held September 28-30, 2005, at the School of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University.
Since Dr. Harmon provides an extensive introduction to his section, I will not
discuss the specifics of it here. I did not attend the conference myself, but
after reading these very informative pieces, I understand why it was organized,
what was discussed, what it accomplished and the interest and excitement it
generated. I am sure Bulletin readers,
many of whom attended the conference or share an interest in the I-School
movement, will find this section valuable. I
am very grateful to the guest editor for his dedication to reporting this event
for the Bulletin.
For
my own part, I was particularly intrigued by the article Anthony Debons wrote
with Glynn Harmon comparing this conference to the NATO Advanced Study
Institutes in Information Science of the early 1970s (“The I-Conference in
Retrospect”). Those events occurred as I was finishing my Ph.D. in information
science (according to me, not according to my diploma). Naturally, as I view my
graduate-school cohort rapidly becoming emeritus professors of information science programs, there is a tendency to ask whether there
is anything new here. But the authors, who were honored for their pioneering
work in information at the conference, point to some distinct differences, and
they are among the best qualified to observe them. In particular, they (and
others) note that the I-Schools view themselves not as a new science trying to
find a home, but as institutions providing
a home to a wide variety of information-related disciplines in the hope of
improving the synergy, collaboration and identification of the information
field.
Synergy
and collaboration are also the theme of this month’s President’s Page, as
Michael Leach outlines the advantages of greater interaction between the
chapters and the SIGs in creating event programming.
In
another sign of changing times, we carry our first article on video games – or
at least the first under my editorship – following the groundbreaking Gaming,
Learning and Libraries Symposium, held in Chicago in December. Christy Branston, one of the speakers on that occasion, discusses
the potential of video games in library collections and for bibliographic
instruction. My thanks to BulletinAdvisory Board member Linda Rudell-Betts for championing this subject
and finding an author who could address it so well.
Finally,
in the IA Column, Thom Haller provides a case study of the redesign of
www.plainlanguage.gov, the U.S. Government website devoted to improving the
clarity and readability of communications, and our fairly regular item
“What’s New?” appears in this issue featuring practitioner-oriented
summaries of JASIST articles.