PARTICIPANTS

Jenna Hartel (moderator), Department of Information Studies, UCLA
Theresa Anderson, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
William Jones, The Information School, University of Washington
Barbara Kwasnik, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
Soo Young Rieh, School of Information, University of Michigan

ABSTRACT

This panel focuses on an information-rich yet under-examined space: the office. Offices are complex crossroads of information structures, information systems, and information seeking behaviors, all shaped by a particular socio-historical context. The panel brings together experts from diverse specialties who have conducted research into offices or similar settings. Our goals are threefold:

1.) To introduce “the office” as a useful concept for information research

2.) To examine the office from five different perspectives in the field of Information Science (IS), namely: history, metatheory, information seeking behavior, classification, and information systems.

3.) To promote cross-specialty conversations among panelists and the audience, leading to better research

BACKGROUND

Today, the office is a central concept within work life, family routines, and popular culture. In the U.S. a large percentage of labor occurs in office environments. These spaces range from deluxe corner offices of executive management, to the modest cubicles of entry-level employees. Increasingly, families perform a mix of personal business and entertainment in their home office. The idea of the office transcends physical space. The office metaphor underlies Microsoft’s most popular software suite, invisibly framing our relationship to tasks, technology, and people. The power of the office idea is perhaps revealed in the surprising success of the television program, The Office, which chronicles the happenings of one office community. Though the styles and dimensions of offices vary, all share the feature of enabling information-related activities; hence offices entail artifacts such as documents, files, and folders; information systems; classification schemes; and information behaviors such as seeking, using, saving, and sharing.

While the office is an information-rich and ubiquitous phenomenon of the Information Age, research into the topic from the field of IS has been sporadic over the past three decades, excepting the related specialty of computer supported collaborate work (CSCW). In IS proper there is no consensus on office-related terms and concepts. Such settings have been called personal information environments (Malone, 1983; Kwasnik, 1991), personal space libraries (Miksa,1996), information spaces (Lee, 2003), or personal information collections (Bruce, Jones, & Dumais, 2004). Office activities have been coined personal documentation (Stibic, 1980), desk organization (Malone, 1983), and personal information management (Whittaker & Hirschberg, 2001; Jones, 2006, in press; Jones & Teevan, 2007). The lack of integration or consensus of these ideas leaves the IS field at a disadvantage in providing leadership and solving problems in the Information Age.
The cast of the hit television show, “The Office.”

Research into offices in IS has been scattered and non-cumulative because past studies have come from different perspectives of the field. Following disciplinary traditions, investigators have focused on one informational characteristic of offices, which leads to concrete, specialized findings at the necessary expense of an holistic or complete view. For instance, Kwasnik (1989, 1991) studied folk classification systems used by scholars in their offices and within the bounds of that ground-breaking project it was not feasible to simultaneously investigate office information systems, though they are an important related matter. Noting this problem in 2003, Lee reported “a missing link” in the research on information spaces between “users, documents, structures, interactions among the first three, and the environment” (p. 421). In response, this panel will approach the office as an information puzzle with many pieces; we will explore the effect of rallying around a whole mosaic in order to open conversation and integrate research.

Further, the panel will entertain the new metatheoretical perspective that is required to focus on the office. In the recent past, information research has been oriented to frontiers such as the mind (i.e. cognitivism) or the system (i.e. an information-systems perspective), among more than a dozen possible paradigms (Bates, 2005; Talja, Tuominen, & Savolainen, 2005). Most of these conceptual frameworks render physical phenomena, such as a room and its contents, out of view or treat matter as an uncontested background variable. Our panel will address the critical metatheoretical shift required to investigate the material world.

To close, this panel brings together experts from multiple perspectives in the field with something to say about the office. We aim to tackle theoretical issues, examine empirical findings, and demonstrate integrative scholarship. The panelists will make an intentional effort to speak in a general, not specialized, vocabulary; ample time will be provided for audience discussion and participation. Everyone should depart the session with a more complete picture of the important Information Age concept of the office.

THE PANELISTS AND THEIR PERSPECTIVES (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

Jenna Hartel, moderator, Ph.D., Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
Perspective: Background and History
In a lively, illustrated presentation, Dr. Hartel will define office, describe its key features, and sketch its origins in classical antiquity. Briefly, she will survey research into offices within the field of IS and note relevant scholarship in other disciplines. She will identify the challenges to existing research into offices (as outlined above). Finally, she will introduce the panelists and their perspectives. Dr. Hartel will offer concluding remarks and field Q & As.

Theresa Anderson, Senior Lecturer, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Perspective: Metatheory
Dr. Anderson will introduce the sociomaterial perspective (e.g. Anderson, 2007), a metatheory that can enable information researchers to examine both the physical and the social environments that characterize "the office" as a site of study. She will demonstrate the merits of using the sensitizing concept of information life cycle (Harper, 2000; Randall et al., 2005), to trace key information as it makes its way through a site. The life cycle approach involves documents and processes, and rules by which office work is evaluated. Dr. Anderson will engage the audience in the question: Do such sensitizing concepts offer the red thread necessary to examine the dynamic, information rich office environment from an information science perspective?

Soo Young Rieh, Assistant Professor, The School of Information, University of Michigan
Perspective: Information Seeking Behavior
Dr. Rieh will draw from her research into web searching in home environments (Rieh, 2004) and discuss the environmental factors that influence information seeking and use in the home office. Her empirical research has found that home office provides a distinct social context beyond physical setting alone. She will discuss the nature of office settings in which people live, work, and use information.

Barbara Kwasnik, Professor, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University
Perspective: Classification
Building on her dissertation study (Rutgers, 1989) about the role of context in classificatory decisions within university offices, Dr. Kwasnik will explore the effect of time on the organization of documents in offices. She will discuss factors such as urgency, priority, sequencing, fading, archiving, and timeliness, while taking into account the attributes of form, topic, and purpose. These ideas will apply to both paper and digital documents in office settings.

William Jones, Research Associate Professor, The Information School, University of Washington
Perspective: Information Systems
Dr. Jones asks: What is the office in an era of “nomadic computing” where f2f collaboration can happen anywhere including a favorite coffee shop and collaboration can extend over time and across great distances via a variety of communication modes ranging from traditional email to blogs, wikis and, even, virtual realities such as Second Life? What is the desktop and desktop computing in an era when our information – potentially all our information – is on the Web synched as needed with a handheld device carried in pocket or purse? Dr. Jones will explore these questions especially as they relate to our enduring quest to manage, rather than be managed by, our information.


REFERENCES

Anderson, T. (2007) Settings, arenas and boundary objects: socio-material framings of information practices. Information Research, 12(4), [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis10.html]

Bates, M. J. An Introduction to metatheories, theories, and models. In Theories of Information Behavior, ed. Karen E. Fisher, Sanda Erdelez, and Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie. Medford, NJ: Information Today, Inc., 2005.

Bruce, H., Jones, W., & Dumais, S. (2004). Information behaviour that keeps found things found. Information Research, 10(1). paper 207 [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/10-1/paper207.html]

Harper, R.H.R. (2000). The Organisation of ethnography: A discussion of ethnographic fieldwork programs in CSCW. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), 9. 239-64.

Jones, W. (in press). Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Jones, W. (2006). Personal information management. The Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 41.

Jones, W., & Teevan, J. (2007). Personal Information Management. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.

Kwasnik, B. H. (1989). The Influence of context on classificatory behavior. Dissertation. School of Communication and Library Studies. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Kwasnik, B. H. (1991). The importance of factors that are not document attributes in the organization of personal documents. Journal of Documentation, 47(4), 389-98.

Lee, H. L. (2003). Information spaces and collections: Implications for organization. Library & Information Science Research, 25, 419-436.

Malone, T. (1983). How do people organize their desks? Implications for the design of office information systems. Proceedings of ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 1(1), 99-112.

Miksa, F. (1996). The Cultural legacy of the ‘Modern Library’ for the future, The Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 37(2), 100-119.

Randall, D., Harper, R. & Rouncefield, M. (2005). Fieldwork and ethnography: A Perspective from CSCW. Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings (EPIC 2005), American Anthropological Association, 81-99.

Rieh, S. Y. (2004). On the Web at home: Information seeking and web searching in the home environment. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55, pp. 743-753.

Stibic,V. (1980). Personal documentation for professionals: means and methods. Amsterdam: North Holland.

Talja, S., Tuominen, K. & Savolainen, R. (2005). "ISMS" in information science. Journal of Documentation, 61(1), 79-101.

Whittaker, S., & Hirschberg, J. (2001). The character, value and management of paper archives. Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, 8, 150-170.