Commentary: Reflections on Social and Cultural Awareness and Responsibility In Library, Information, and Documentation

This Colloquium is concerned with how our understanding of how our understanding of library, information, and documentation phenomena are related to cultural, historical, social, and political contexts and issues. History is a narrative of what has happened in the past. Heritage is what we now have in the present from that past. The heritage of library, information and documentation studies can be considered in four parts: Documents; ideas; complex problems; and technology. Programs in library, information, and documentation are concerned with what people know, are not limited to digital technology, and require wide-ranging expertise. They differ fundamentally and importantly from computer science programs and from the information systems programs found in business schools. Addressing multiple professional contexts is desirable to achieve economies of scale. Being scholarly, being scientific, and being critical are not the same. We need to be all three. Current views of library, information, and documentation place a greater emphasis on semiotic, semantic, and cultural dimensions than previous, more modernist views. Respect, resources, and autonomy are likely to achieved indirectly from pursuing interesting questions and important problems. This field matters because what individuals know is important. All of the issues raised in this Colloquium require more