Dean Andrew Dillon
School of Information
The University of Texas at Austin

What is the Field of Information Studies?

It is something of a tautology to define the field of information studies as a discipline that investigates the properties and behavior of information. But borrowing from Borko (1968) this starting point can be expanded upon to define the field as studying the forces governing the flow of information and the means of supporting optimum access and use. In doing so, we must study the origination, collection, organization, storage, retrieval, interpretation, transmission, transformation, and utilization of information.

As Borko noted, the field of information studies can be seen as both a pure science, developing theories from data on information properties and behaviors, and an applied field, which develops services and products.

While there is much to admire in such a definition, I tend to think of information really as a mix of two components: a representation or product (such as a book, a Web site, an algorithm, a tape, a data set, etc.) and a process of decoding (such as an intelligent reader with a method of access). Considering information as both product and process serves to broaden our perspective of the field and our legitimate areas of enquiry.

The legacy of library and information studies is long and not without honor, but in examining the last century it is clear that in our studies, representation trumps decoding. We have learned about and advocated for storage, preservation, and the development of collections rather more forcefully than we have for sustaining, providing, and protecting the appropriate means of interpretation or decoding.

Rather than talk about the “components” of information so construed, it is perhaps better to consider them as phases, or a natural coupling of structure (or product) and process, where we have too rarely acknowledged the phase of process. To give process its due, we need to extend our studies to human meaning. By this I mean that we need to go beyond emphasizing the artifacts of information (the objects we house and keep) and place them in their proper human context of use. An object without a human is difficult for me to conceive of as information—and while some may place great value on having libraries exist without people, I cannot see the point in us adopting that as a reality (or even an ideal, as some would have it) when the typical citizen spends a large part of her life in the act of interpretation. But the opposite is true too. We can have no real decoding and interpretation without representations, and the quality of representation is hugely significant to the experiences and advances of our world. Hence my emphasis on regarding information as product and process, combined in a synergistic cycle of use.

Why Sound Matters

So what has this to do with sound preservation? In my view, sound is at the cutting edge of much of what is important now to the field of information studies, and I can see several reasons for this.

• Sound is a medium that is intimately tied to tests of copyright limits in our society. And this is most blatantly so since sound is a medium in high demand by consumers.

• Music and sound are transcultural in a manner that is not so for text. Whether white men can play the blues may never be resolved in some purists' minds, but there is no doubting that the representations of history and culture that are captured in music can be processed and enjoyed by people outside that culture. The rise of world music, the merging of cultural styles, and the worldwide love of opera by people who cannot speak a word of Italian are testimony to the emotional response people have to music.

• The next tidal wave of digital content is rich media, a seamless convergence of audio, video, and text. As yet, true hypermedia of the kind envisaged decades ago has yet to emerge and even the Web, in all its glory, is (with some noticeable exceptions) a text-heavy medium. Audio is the great underutilized resource. Hypermedia in popular use is a visual medium, with audio seen as ‘extra’, but there are signs that this will change.

Spring (1991) noted that at some point in the mid-1980s, a radical shift occurred in computing—without much attention being given to it—when more computing cycles came to be spent on words than numbers.

The question then is, “Are we now continuing that movement from numbers to words to pictures and then sounds?” Perhaps we will end up with them all, and we certainly must if we are to exploit the dream of hypermedia, but to get there we need a far better understanding of sound and its role in information use.

Sound is really an ecological interface to information. By this I mean that sound is a highly refined yet natural source of information for all humans. Among a child’s first perceptions are the sounds of his mother’s heartbeat. Everyone has favorite pieces of music that evoke strong emotional responses. People buy or consume music in significant numbers. While it is common to talk of library usage rates for books, the ALA’s own statistics indicate that about as many people use the library to borrow CDs as they do to use the Internet, the more heralded function claimed for public libraries. Clearly sound has significant status in our lives, but its taken-for-granted nature often causes us to overlook the centrality of audio in everyday use.

Sound at UT’s School of Information

It is perhaps something of a cliché to refer to information as the currency of 21st century life but this points to the emphasis now placed on understanding contemporary life through an information-based lens. I am not referring here only to the information economy, important as that is, but to the broader ideals of digital citizenship, information as a right not a luxury, and the need to develop what has often been termed “information literacy” in order to participate fully in today’s world.

At the School of Information here in Austin, we consider information as a product and process to be studied and understood across its complete lifecycle, from production to preservation, through management, use, and application.

Preservation and conservation are key components of this information lifecycle, and audio is both a natural element and a complement to other elements in information space. In our curriculum we view sound as belonging everywhere, from Karl Miller’s laboratory for sound preservation to the digital media classes where sound is designed into an application to enhance the user experience, again emphasizing the product and process nature of information.

The school is also an intellectual home for the newly announced Knowledge Gateway at The University of Texas at Austin , an ambitious project aimed at providing access for every citizen, via a personalized Internet window, into the resources of our university, including the libraries, collections, museums and much more. Such a project demands audio and ensures that the emphasis on understanding the use and preservation of sound recordings will remain at the forefront of our thinking.

Beyond Sharing: Three Goals for This Meeting

This meeting brought with it a charge. This is the first sound preservation symposium of its kind and our hope is that it will not be the last. However, for this to work participants must move us forward in three directions. I see three goals here:

1. Articulating an agenda
2. Establishing synergies
3. Creating the touchstone

With this gathering of content experts, preservationists, archivists, researchers, teachers, cultural scholars, and foundation representatives there is a real need to find a common voice. It won’t be easy but the challenge is important. As a school, we need to know how this discipline is evolving and what our students will need to study in order to participate. Many of us are looking for such an agenda as a major outcome of this meeting.

I have always believed that the future of the information field will be determined largely by how well people from different backgrounds can learn to tackle the problems together. LIS programs have often taken the lead in attracting experts from different fields but the results have not always been as desired. Synergies take effort, first at learning to communicate and then in seeing how combined perspectives and resources can yield better results. I challenge all of you here to find others outside your normal comfort zone with whom to engage. The task then will be to continue this engagement beyond the present symposium.

Finally, this symposium needs to stake the territory. This event should, if we meet the first two goals, require little further effort to be the reference point for others who come later or who could not be here this week. We are in the business of shaping the program and no doubt we will get some of it wrong. But this is the point at which the future of sound preservation should be planned and the point to which others will later refer as the landmark event that started it all. If we are not here for this, why are we here at all?

So, the challenges are immense but so are the rewards. This is a meeting of like minds and the real work now begins. Let’s lay the groundwork for progress in this area by engaging in open discussion and sharing lessons learned. The future of sound will depend on us.

References

Borko, H. “Information Science: What is it?” American Documentation 19, no.1 (1968): 3-5.

Spring, M. Electronic Printing and Publishing: The Document Processing Revolution, New York: Marcel Dekker Inc., 1991.

© 2003 Andrew Dillon