SLIS faculty members are regularly invited to give talks both in the U.S. and globally. On March 3, 2009, SLIS Dean Blaise Cronin presented "Twenty-first Century Invisible Colleges" at Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland. And, on February 27, 2009 - SLIS Associate Dean Howard Rosenbaum gave the talk "Technology, Organization, and Objects: Reflections on the Problem of Agency" at the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, New York. Abstracts are below.
Abstract: Twenty-first Century Invisible Colleges - Blaise Cronin
The chemist Robert Boyle first used the term "invisible college" in 1646 to describe a network of experimental scientists who used to meet weekly in London, and subsequently also in Oxford, to discuss their work. That loose association crystallized some years later (in 1662) as the Royal Society. The historian of science, Derek de Solla Price, brought the term back into fashion in the 1960s, using bibliometric techniques to map elite groups of highly productive and tightly connected scientists; he referred to these socio-cognitive networks as "invisible colleges." Diana Crane, a sociologist, further popularized the construct with the publication of her book, Invisible Colleges, in 1972. Today, the term is widely used in both academic and lay discourse even through there is still little agreement as to what the constituent features of an invisible college might be. Nonetheless, the construct of an "invisible college" is a useful way of opening up discussion on the nature and extent of informal collaboration in science, as Caroline Wagner (2008) shows in her book, The New Invisible Colleges.
Abstract: Technology, Organization, and Objects - Howard Rosenbaum
In management and information systems research, there has been a long standing debate over the relationship between technology and the organization in which it is embedded. This debate flares up periodically and in the current version, Rose, Jones, and Truex (2005; 133) ask whether "technology cause(s) effects in organizations, or is it humans that determine how technology is used." Explaining that structuration and actor network theory are two alternatives to technological and social determinisms, they criticize both for inadequate conceptions of agency. In this presentation, we will explore this critique and speculate on the ways in which the debate can be shaped by thinking about technology as a social and material object and the sense in which it can be said to have agency.
Posted March 04, 2009