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The purpose of this paper is to explore and explicate documentation ideals parallel to information policy, and by means of this analysis demonstrate how the concept “documentation ideals” is an analytical tool for engaging with political and institutional contexts of information practices.

The paper is based on a case study of documentation ideals in a debate about quality in archaeological documentation. The methodology draws on idea analysis, and on the science and technology studies’ controversy studies approach.

The paper explicates three documentation ideals, how these ideals allocate responsibility for documentation to different actors, how the ideals assign roles to practitioners, and how the ideals point to different beneficiaries of the documentation. Furthermore, the analysis highlights ideas about two different means to reach the documentation ideals.

The case’s debate reflects opinions of Northern European professionals.

The paper illuminates how documentation ideals tweak and even contest formal information policy in claims on the documentation and on the practitioners doing documentation.

Documentation ideal analysis is crucial as a complement to formal information policy analysis and to analysis guided by practice theory in attempts to understand the contexts of information practices and documentation, insights central for developing information literacies.

The purpose of this paper is to nuance the perception about professional documentation (a.k.a. “grey literature”), assuming perception of documentation being a cultural aspect of accessibility.

The study explores variations within the archaeological report genre through a bibliometric analysis of source use. Source characteristics are explored as well as correlations between report authors and source originators. Statistical frequency distribution is complemented by a correspondence analysis and a k-means cluster analysis to explore patterns. The patterns are interpreted as “frames of references” and related to circumstances for archaeological work. The study also discusses source representations.

The source use patterns reveal a latent variation, not visible in the general analysis: a professional/academic frame of reference (mainly among authors affiliated with incorporated businesses and sole proprietorships) and an administrative frame of reference (mainly among authors affiliated with government agencies, foundations, and member associations) emerge.

The study focuses on Swedish field evaluation reports. Future research could test the results in relation to other types of reports and go beyond the document perspective to explore source use in documentation practices.

The results on variations in frames of references among report writers have implication for report readers and user. The results should also be considered in archaeology management and policy-making. On the level of source representation the results call for clarifications of vague representations and possibly omitted sources.

This study contextualizes archaeological information use and focuses on variations in professional archaeology which has received little previous research attention. The bibliometric approach complements previous qualitative studies of archaeological information.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the ninth annual meeting of Libraries in the Digital Age and its program.

Conference report.

Longitudinal studies are now indicating trends in how readers and users are relying upon a digital library (DL) compared to traditional print and hybrid collections. Interestingly, values remain unchanged as expectations grow.

Now that there is critical mass of digitized content libraries are creating ways to develop and customize services in this DL environment.

The present study aims to contribute to the understanding of digital participation in heritage collections as a democratizing practice by identifying and challenging silent assumptions concerning how the insufficient influence of participants is conceived of as a problem.

Three carefully selected scholarly texts incorporating problematizations of insufficient participatory agency were analyzed in detail using a method inspired by Carol Bacchi's approach “what's the problem represented to be?” (WPR), with special emphasis on analysis of ontological elements of the problematizations.

Participation is problematized based on the assumption that participatory agency risks jeopardizing the protection of heritage and leads to parts of the public memory being forgotten. To challenge the idea that participatory agency is destructive, the present article argues for elaborating an understanding of what forgetting entails for heritage. Framing forgetting as a potentially both harmful and generative concept enables a separation of destructive forgetting (e.g. destruction of historical evidence) and constructive forgetting (re-contextualization).

The study is based on a limited number of texts, and problematizations are investigated in relation to a specific perspective on participatory agency.

By understanding forgetting as a potentially beneficial activity for representation and heritage construction, the article provides a conceptual rationale for facilitating re-contextualization in the design of multi-layered information structures for heritage collections.

There is little earlier research on the silent assumptions that affect how participation is understood and implemented.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how contemporary fact-checking is discursively constructed in Swedish news media; this serves to gain insight into how this practice is understood in society.

A selection of texts on the topic of fact-checking published by two of Sweden’s largest morning newspapers is analyzed through the lens of Fairclough’s discourse theoretical framework.

Three key discourses of fact-checking were identified, each of which included multiple sub-discourses. First, a discourse that has been labeled as “the affirmative discourse,” representing fact-checking as something positive, was identified. This discourse embraces ideas about fact-checking as something that, for example, strengthens democracy. Second, a contrasting discourse that has been labeled “the adverse discourse” was identified. This discourse represents fact-checking as something precarious that, for example, poses a risk to democracy. Third, a discourse labeled “the agency discourse” was identified. This discourse conveys ideas on whose responsibility it is to conduct fact-checking.

A better understanding of the discursive construction of fact-checking provides insights into social practices pertaining to it and the expectations of its role in contemporary society. The results are relevant for journalists and professionals who engage in fact-checking and for others who have a particular interest in fact-checking, e.g. librarians and educators engaged in media and information literacy projects.

Arts-informed, visual research was conducted to document the pictorial metaphors that appear among original drawings of information. The purpose of this paper is to report the diversity of these pictorial metaphors, delineate their formal qualities as drawings, and provide a fresh perspective on the concept of information.

The project utilized pre-existing iSquare drawings of information that were produced by iSchool graduate students during a draw-and-write activity. From a data set of 417 images, 125 of the strongest pictorial metaphors were identified and subjected to cognitive metaphor theory.

Overwhelmingly, the favored source domain for envisioning information was nature. The most common pictorial metaphors were: Earth, web, tree, light bulb, box, cloud, and fishing/mining, and each brings different qualities of information into focus. The drawings were often canonical versions of objects in the world, leading to arrays of pictorial metaphors marked by their similarity.

Less than 30 percent of the data set qualified as pictorial metaphors, making them a minority strategy for representing information as an image. The process to identify and interpret pictorial metaphors was highly subjective. The arts-informed methodology generated tensions between artistic and social scientific paradigms.

The pictorial metaphors for information can enhance information science education and fortify professional identity among information professionals.

This is the first arts-informed, visual study of information that utilizes cognitive metaphor theory to explore the nature of information. It strengthens a sense of history, humanity, nature, and beauty in our understanding of information today, and contributes to metaphor research at large.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to a discussion about the future of librarianship.

An analytical framework is used to discuss the future of libraries. The framework is based on current trends in contemporary librarianship and is used as a way of structuring predictions about the future of librarianship. Special attention is given to public libraries and academic libraries.

Libraries are seen moving from a traditional situation with a high degree of constitutive documentality and internal legitimacy with collections in focus to one with a high degree of performative documentality and external legitimacy, with adjustment to user needs as the prime goal. This development is related to the emergence of New Public Management and can be seen both in public and academic libraries. It is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

The analytical framework and concepts used are originally developed for this text and prove to be valuable tools in fulfilling the purpose of the article. It represents a new and original way of discussing the future of libraries.