| CODE | LIA1326 | |||||||||
| TITLE | Information History: Ideas, Infrastructures and Institutions | |||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 01 - Year 1 in Modular Undergraduate Course | |||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | |||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | |||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Library Information and Archive Sciences | |||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit introduces and presents some of the major historical developments of the concept of information. It explores how important historical events have affected and helped construct ideas of information and practices with it. This study-unit will also examine how changing, evolving (devolving), and shifting ideas of information directly and indirectly influence political economic, social, cultural, and institutional settings, systems, infrastructures, and contexts. Topics to be covered in the study-unit include: - History of Information and documentation overview; - Historical context for Information Science; - Information ages and society; - Information institutions (libraries, archives, museums); - Ancient information concepts, practices, and institutions (Antiquity, Islamic World, and China); - Communicating information across distance (Morse Code and African talking drums); - Writing technologies and the development of the organization of recorded information; - Stabilizing information (evolution, stabilization, and materialization of language through documentation like dictionaries); - The first computer (Babbage's Analytical Machine); - The first wired information (telegraph, telephone, electricity); - Code-making/breaking (Enigma, WWII, and the Information Turn); - The emergence, spread, and ubiquity of the Internet; - Information flood (data deluge, information anxiety, and technologies to control and manage it all). Study-unit Aims: This unit aims to introduce some of the major historical developments of the concept of information, including important historical periods and events that helped construct the idea of information and its resulting historically-contingent institutions, practices, and perceptions. It also illuminates how information has emerged, evolved, developed, changed, and been perceived and used in different historical contexts and how they, in turn, inform present ideas of and practices with information. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Describe the historical background, development, and dimensions of the concept of information; - Summarize and illustrate the major historical contexts of information institutions and practices; - Explain the historical foundations of Information Science as a scholarly discipline and professional practices; - Identify some of the broad historical developments and trends that have and continue to influence and shape our concepts of and practices with information today in political, economic, cultural, and social contexts. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Conduct specialised research, specifically regarding the history of Information Science as a discipline and profession; - Apply and leverage historical understanding and contextual analysis to contemporary information organizations, practices, and systems; - Critically compare diverse contextually-contingent information settings and situations. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main Texts: - Blair, Ann, Duguid, Paul, Goeing, Anja-Silvia, and Grafton, Anthony. (2021). Information: A Historical Companion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. - Gleick, James. (2011). The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. New York: Pantheon Books. - Lerner, Fred. (1998; 2009). The Story of Libraries: From the Invention of Writing to the Computer Age. New York: Continuum. - Ryan, Johnny. (2010/2013). A History of the Internet and the Digital Future. Clerkenwell: Reaktion. Supplementary Readings: - Manguel, Alberto. (1996). A History of Reading. Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada. - Morozov, Evgeny. (2011). The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. New York: Public Affairs. - Ovenden, Richard. (2020). Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. - Polastron, Lucien X. (2007). Books on Fire: The Tumultuous Story of the World's Great Libraries. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. - Raven, James. (2004). Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections since Antiquity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. - Wu, TIm. (2013). The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. New York, NY: Vintage Books. |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | |||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Marc Kosciejew |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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