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Social
Informatics
W.
David Penniman, Guest Editor
Dave
Penniman is dean and professor at the
School
of
Informatics
at the University at
Buffalo
. He can be reached by email
at penniman@buffalo.edu
 For this special section of
the Bulletin
of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, which
we’ll wrap up with a final article in the next issue, we have
gathered a collection of articles that describe “social
informatics” in principle and practice. When you read these
articles, you may still wonder, “Do I really know what is meant
when they say social informatics?” We have grappled with this
question in the
School
of
Informatics
at the University at
Buffalo
since our first efforts at creating a mission for the school in
2001. We knew that our concerns are different from computer science,
library science, information science or even communication, and yet
all of these areas were a part of the picture. We knew that our
focus was on the intersections of people, information and technology
and that our mission involved the social
aspects of information. And, we were not alone, nor were we
first to articulate this focus.
No
discussion of social informatics can begin without acknowledging the
contributions of Rob Kling, whose untimely death robbed him of the
joy of seeing his words quoted frequently and his ideas embraced by
so many. His Center for Social Informatics at Indiana University
paved the way for the authors in this special section and for
scholars everywhere who seek to understand the social contexts of
information technology and the interaction between technology and
social change. As Steve Sawyer said of him, “Rob was not always
right, but he was always certain. He was not always polished, but he
was always bright.” Steve and others honor him by continuing the
work Rob began.
Indiana
University, like the University at Buffalo, has a School of
Informatics in addition to the Center for Social Informatics. While
there are only two “Schools of Informatics” in the United States
currently, this domain is also embraced by other academic units. The
new “information schools” that are emerging from traditional
library schools such as the Information School at the University of
Washington or evolving computer science schools such as the one at
the University of California at Irvine are embracing informatics
concepts. This broadened view is not limited to our continent
either. Scholars such as Liz Davenport at Napier University (as well
as those at the University at Edinburgh) also embrace the concepts
presented in the following articles. Those of us in the United
States are not alone, nor are we operating independently. There is
an “invisible college” of scholars and practitioners sharing
ideas and research without geographic boundaries. Indeed, we are
subjects of our own domain – for we are engaged in social
informatics as we develop this field.
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