Exploring the Information Underworld

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Dr. Elisabeth Davenport
Professor of Information Management, Social Informatics Research Group
School of Computing, NapierUniversity Edinburgh Scotland

Thursday, November 2, 2006
Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey

The New Jersey Chapter of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (NJ/ASIS&T) proudly announces Elisabeth Davenport as the recipient of its twentieth annual Distinguished Lectureship Award. The New Jersey Chapter established this award in 1985 to honor individuals who have made significant contributions to the field of information science. Due to the stature of the awardees, this award has become internationally acknowledged. You are cordially invited to attend the events surrounding the presentation of this year's award.

Speaker biography

Dr. Elisabeth Davenport is Professor of Information Management in the School of Computing, Napier University (www.soc.napier.ac.uk), where she is head of the Social Informatics Research Group and is a Research Associate of the International Teledemocracy Research Centre. Her background is eclectic, and includes humanities, earth sciences and information science. She has been a Visiting Scholar in the School of Library and Information Science at Bloomington, Indiana, for over ten years, and was recently an invited Visiting Professor in the École de Bibliothéconomie et de Science d’Information (EBSI) in the University of Montreal.

Dr. Davenport’s research has systematically focused on socio-technical problems in the area of organizational and institutional computing and technology. Use of a Social Informatics ‘lens’ has provided fresh insights into puzzles and problems in knowledge management, organizational systems implementation, and communication and collaboration in science. With colleagues in the Napier Social Informatics research group, she has applied a number of design and evaluation approaches to systems development. These take account of social context, and ways in which technology transforms social and institutional interactions.

Output from the group’s research has been disseminated widely – in journals, conference proceedings, book chapters, workshops and conference panels. Dr. Davenport has lectured and taught in a number of institutions in Europe and North and South America, and has been an invited speaker at a number of key social informatics sites in the US (UCLA, UC Irvine, Indiana). In addition to editorial board work (current positions include the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology and the editorial committee of a research monograph series published by Springer/Kluwer), she has served on a number of conference committees (including Communities and Technologies and the ASIS&T Annual Meeting).

PROGRAM
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Afternoon Colloquium

3:00-4:30

Scholarly Communication Center , Alexander Library (4th floor)
Rutgers University , 169 College Avenue , New Brunswick , NJ

http://maps.rutgers.edu/directions.aspx?id=17

Dr. Davenport will present her research in a talk entitled:

Excavating organizational knowledge:

what to look for, where to draw the line

Who decides what “knowledge” is? Who decides what “counts” and what doesn’t? How is knowledge managed – and who has the power to determine that? By investigating works-in-progress, Dr. Davenport explores these themes and goes on to analyze institutional websites to show how much more they can reveal -- than their sponsors ever intended.

Evening Reception and Dinner
The University Inn and Conference Center at Rutgers :

http://univinn.rutgers.edu/ .

5:00 Networking Reception

6:00 Dinner Buffet (reservations required due to limited seating)

7:00-9:00
Distinguished Lectureship Award Program

NJ/ASIS&T Distinguished Lectureship Award presentation,
followed by an address by Elisabeth Davenport:

Exploring the underworld – social infrastructure and IT development work.

Information systems projects often surprise us – an elegant formalism fails to meet requirements, an application that followed the best participative design principles is not used. How do such things happen, and what may we do about unintended consequences? Dr. Davenport suggests that we need to explore the underworld of systems development – the pushing and shoving, the wheeling and dealing, the pecking orders that shape project development. A number of approaches are reviewed that explore this social infrastructure, and the author presents her own experiences using social informatics methods to solve puzzles. These suggest that unintended consequences are often uncharted choices. The accounts that emerge from this line of work challenge current methods for writing project specifications and reports – how can project work accommodate them?

Presented with generous sponsorship from:

NJ Chapter, ASIS&T

Princeton-Trenton Chapter, Special Libraries Association

NJ Chapter, Special Libraries Association

Rutgers University Libraries

Rutgers University School of Communication, Information and Library Studies

REGISTRATION

Please print and fill out the following portion, then return it to Maurica
Fedors, Manager, Technical Information Center, Phone: 732-205-5269, BASF Catalysts LLC, 101 Wood Ave., Iselin, New Jersey 08830-0770 -- with your check payable to NJ/ASIST -- by Friday, October 20, Refer questions to Maurica at 732-205-5269 or maurica.fedors@basf.com

I plan to attend the following events:

___ Afternoon Colloquium (no charge)

Evening Reception / Buffet Dinner / Program
__ $25.00 non-members
__ $20.00 members (ASIS&T / SLA)
__ $12.00 students

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Please send checks and reservation information on this form (or a reasonable facsimile) to:

NJ/ASIST: Maurica Fedors (BASF Catalysts LLC, 101 Wood Avenue, Iselin, NJ 08830); voice: 732-205-5269, FAX: 732-205-6900, or e-mail: maurica.fedors@basf.com

Please make sure your payment arrives by Friday, October 20, 2006. There will be no refunds without 72 hours notice.

Afternoon Colloquium 3:00-4:30	Scholarly Communication Center , Alexander Library (4th floor) Rutgers University , 169 College Avenue , New Brunswick , NJ http://maps.rutgers.edu/directions.aspx?id=17 Dr. Davenport will present her research in a talk entitled: Excavating organizational knowledge: what to look for, where to draw the line Who decides what “knowledge” is? Who decides what “counts” and what doesn’t? How is knowledge managed – and who has the power to determine that? By investigating works-in-progress, Dr. Davenport explores these themes and goes on to analyze institutional websites to show how much more they can reveal -- than their sponsors ever intended.
Evening Reception and Dinner	The University Inn and Conference Center at Rutgers : http://univinn.rutgers.edu/ .
5:00	Networking Reception
6:00	Dinner Buffet (reservations required due to limited seating)
7:00-9:00	Distinguished Lectureship Award Program NJ/ASIS&T Distinguished Lectureship Award presentation, followed by an address by Elisabeth Davenport: Exploring the underworld – social infrastructure and IT development work. Information systems projects often surprise us – an elegant formalism fails to meet requirements, an application that followed the best participative design principles is not used. How do such things happen, and what may we do about unintended consequences? Dr. Davenport suggests that we need to explore the underworld of systems development – the pushing and shoving, the wheeling and dealing, the pecking orders that shape project development. A number of approaches are reviewed that explore this social infrastructure, and the author presents her own experiences using social informatics methods to solve puzzles. These suggest that unintended consequences are often uncharted choices. The accounts that emerge from this line of work challenge current methods for writing project specifications and reports – how can project work accommodate them?
	Presented with generous sponsorship from: NJ Chapter, ASIS&T Princeton-Trenton Chapter, Special Libraries Association NJ Chapter, Special Libraries Association Rutgers University Libraries Rutgers University School of Communication, Information and Library Studies