Lorcan Dempsey

This is a further excerpt from my response to the LIS Forward paper. It considers some of the history and contours of the informational disciplines - information science, LIS, library studies. It notes the ongoing blurriness of identity, nomenclature and boundaries.

A short discussion of sources of ideas in the library community, with special reference to the general framework laid out by Daniel Drezner.

I wrote this piece on libraries and possible educational responses as part of a longer contribution on the informational disciplines and the iSchool. A principal goal was to suggest that libraries present interesting and challenging research and educational questions, which cross disciplines.

In a piece on the informational disciplines and the iSchool, I sketched this very schematic and informal overview of information, broadly construed. My focus is pragmatic, related to library interests. I consider several current issues, including the 'apotheosis of the document' in an AI context.

So-called soft skills are important across a range of library activities. Existing trends will further amplify this importance. Describing these skills as soft may be misleading, or even damaging. They should be recognized as learnable and teachable, and should be explicitly supported and rewarded.