Conceptual modeling is a broad practice encompassing knowledge organization, domain modeling, and knowledge representation. It is best understood not as a scientific process of discovery, but as a constructive process of language design. This constructive process involves both explicating differences of meaning implicit in some discursive tradition and revising those differences to improve that tradition. Understood this way, conceptual modeling can serve as the basis for a paradigm of information research and practice that does not reproduce fundamental asymmetries between researchers and the people they study, or between practitioners and the people they serve. Progress within this paradigm will involve combining methods from what have up to now been different traditions or modes of conceptual modeling. It will require paying closer attention to the historical and structural dimensions of discursive traditions and reimagining the function of critique.

ABSTRACTMichael Buckland's influential career spans several decades and has an international reach. His work has helped the field to define such key concepts as “information” and “document.” The presentations will address just a few of many topics he addressed in his career; these topics have had enormous influence on people's work in information science and on the research community. Documentation is one area that has captured Buckland's attention, and Ronald Day will present a perspective that embraces history and the current state. Fang Wang will revisit the question of what is the “science” of information science. Ryan Shaw turns his eyes to the existence and state of data science. Tatjana Aparac‐Jelušić will speak to the international scope of Buckland's work and influence. With this panel we are attempting to emphasize the need for historical and theoretical enquiry into the information field, as represented by Buckland's scholarship and its relevance to the entirety of information science. We are attempting to accomplish this emphasis by integrating the participation of audience members into the discussion.

This article first focuses on the emergence of a scholarly discourse on periodization. That discourse includes historians' efforts to diversify criteria for individuating periods, and philosophers' analyses of periodization as a form of historiographical theorizing. Next the article turns to the dynamic interaction between scholarly periodization and the broader institutionalization of periodizations. This is followed by a brief review of arguments against periodization. The article ends with a look at how periodizations are treated in knowledge organization systems (KOS).

This article first focuses on the emergence of a scholarly discourse on periodization. That discourse includes historians' efforts to diversify criteria for individuating periods, and philosophers' analyses of periodization as a form of historiographical theorizing. Next the article turns to the dynamic interaction between scholarly periodization and the broader institutionalization of periodizations. This is followed by a brief review of arguments against periodization. The article ends with a look at how periodizations are treated in knowledge organization systems (KOS).

This article first focuses on the emergence of a scholarly discourse on periodization. That discourse includes historians' efforts to diversify criteria for individuating periods, and philosophers' analyses of periodization as a form of historiographical theorizing. Next the article turns to the dynamic interaction between scholarly periodization and the broader institutionalization of periodizations. This is followed by a brief review of arguments against periodization. The article ends with a look at how periodizations are treated in knowledge organization systems (KOS).

Journal of the Association for Information Science and TechnologyVolume 72, Issue 8 p. 1092-1095 BOOK REVIEW Engines of order: A mechanology of algorithmic techniques. Rieder, Bernhard. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020, 352 pp., € 115,00 (hardcover). (ISBN 9789462986190). € 0,00 (PDF). (ISBN 9789048537419). Ryan Shaw, Corresponding Author ryanshaw@unc.edu orcid.org/0000-0002-5486-159X School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA Correspondence Ryan Shaw, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. Email: ryanshaw@unc.eduSearch for more papers by this author Ryan Shaw, Corresponding Author ryanshaw@unc.edu orcid.org/0000-0002-5486-159X School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA Correspondence Ryan Shaw, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. Email: ryanshaw@unc.eduSearch for more papers by this author First published: 01 March 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24462Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume72, Issue8August 2021Pages 1092-1095 RelatedInformation

Background. Despite rapid advances in the technical aspects of our networked computational infrastructure, there is growing sentiment that society is ill-served by what we have built. Aim. I take the position that the failure of our networked computational infrastructure to serve the common good is due to the lack of established institutions that might govern it. I outline a rationale for such institutions, modelled upon Vesa Suominen's rationale for the institutions of librarianship. Method. I put Suominen's ideas in dialogue with the work of Luc Boltanski, who supplies insights into the functioning of institutions and the interdependency of institutions and critique. Results. I identify three aspects of Suominen's rationale for librarianship of particular importance to rationalising institutions of critical technical practice: his critique of userism, his vision of a reflexive institution, and his conception of the relation between research and practice. Conclusions. I conclude that information schools, despite having distanced themselves from institutional conceptions of their mission, are well-positioned to develop new institutions of critical technical practice.

Periods are the set pieces of history, and their staging is a strategy for making change over time meaningful and understandable. Periodization structures not only histories themselves, but also the ways those histories are organized in libraries, the ways teachers of history organize syllabi and textbooks, and the ways historians organize themselves in academic institutions. Like the histories they structure, periodizations are also imposed on the conquered by their conquerors. Periodization itself is a legacy of colonialism, grounded in a linear ontology of time that has forced aside indigenous understandings of temporality. Periodization is also a perennial topic for reflection in the humanities, as scholars cast a critical eye on the categories that organize their work. But like a linear conception of time, periodization is both easily critiqued and difficult to relinquish.

Document engineering employs practices of modeling and representation. Enactment of these practices relies on shared metaphors. However, choices driven by metaphor often receive less attention than those driven by factors critical to developing working systems, such as performance and usability. One way to remedy this issue is to take a historical approach, studying cases without a guiding concern for their ongoing development and maintenance. In this paper, we compare two historical case studies of "failed" designs for hypertext on the Web. The first case is netomat (1999), a Web browser created by the artist Maciej Wisniewski, which responded to search queries with dynamic multimedia streams culled from across the Web and structured by a custom markup language. The second is the XML Linking Language (XLink), a W3C standard to express hypertext links within and between XML documents. Our analysis focuses on the relationship between the metaphors used to make sense of Web documents and the hypermedia structures they compose. The metaphors offered by netomat and XLink stand as alternatives to metaphors of the "page" or the "app." Our intent here is not to argue that any of these metaphors are superior, but to consider how designers' and engineers' metaphorical choices are situated within a complex of already existing factors shaping Web technology and practice. The results provide insight into underexplored interconnections between art and document engineering at a critical moment in the history of the Web, and demonstrate the value for designers and engineers of studying "paths not taken" during the history of the technologies we work on today.

The PeriodO project seeks to fill a gap in the landscape of digital antiquity through the creation of a Linked Data gazetteer of period definitions that transparently record the spatial and temporal boundaries assigned to a given period by an authoritative source. Our presentation of the PeriodO gazetteer is prefaced by a history of the role of periodization in the study of the past, and an analysis of the difficulties created by the use of periods for both digital data visualization and integration. This is followed by an overview of the PeriodO data model, a description of the platform's architecture, and a discussion of the future direction of the project.

This paper presents visualizations to facilitate users’ ability to understand personal narratives in the historical and sociolinguistic context that they occurred. The visualizations focus on several elements of narrative – time, space, and emotion – to explore oral testimonies of Korean “comfort women,” women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese military during World War II. The visualizations were designed to enable viewers to easily spot similarities and differences in life paths among individuals and also form an integrated view of spatial, temporal and emotional aspects of narrative. By exploring the narratives through the interactive interfaces, these visualizations facilitate users’ understandings of the unique identities and experiences of the comfort women, in addition to their collective and shared story. Visualizations of this kind could be integrated into a toolkit for humanities scholars to facilitate exploration and analysis of other historical narratives, and thus serve as windows to intimate aspects of the past.

The information expressed in humanities datasets is inextricably tied to a wider discursive environment that is irreducible to complete formal representation. Humanities scholars must wrestle with this fact when they attempt to publish or consume structured data. The practice of “nanopublication,” which originated in the e-science domain, offers a way to maintain the connection between formal representations of humanities data and its discursive basis. In this paper we describe nanopublication, its potential applicability to the humanities, and our experience curating humanities nanopublications in the PeriodO period gazetteer.

DNA sequencers, Twitter, MRIs, Facebook, particle accelerators, Google Books, radio telescopes, Tumblr: what do these things have in common? According to the evangelists of "data science," all of these are instruments for observing reality at unprecedentedly large scales and fine granularities. This perspective ignores the social reality of these very different technological systems, ignoring how they are made, how they work, and what they mean in favor of an exclusive focus on what they generate: Big Data. But no data, big or small, can be interpreted without an understanding of the process that generated them. Statistical data science is applicable to systems that have been designed as scientific instruments, but is likely to lead to confusion when applied to systems that have not. In those cases, a historical inquiry is preferable.

A web-based tool for making and sharing research designed for authors, curators, and editors in the humanities is described, editorsnotes.org. Notes are a varied genre not limited to annotations. The data for the tool is modeled as three kinds of records: Notes created; Documents cited; and Topics, headings for names and subjects. Structured records are needed for interoperability and sharing. Open access, sustainability issues, and how working notes can complement other infrastructure are discussed in a status report.