Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet

by Christine L. Borgman

An exploration of the technical, social, legal, and economic aspects of the scholarly infrastructure needed to support research activities in all fields in the twenty-first century. Scholars in all fields now have access to an unprecedented wealth of online information, tools, and services. The Internet lies at the core of an information infrastructure for distributed, data-intensive, and collaborative research. Although much attention has been paid to the new technologies making this possible, from digitized books to sensor networks, it is the underlying social and policy changes that will have the most lasting effect on the scholarly enterprise. In Scholarship in the Digital Age , Christine Borgman explores the technical, social, legal, and economic aspects of the kind of infrastructure that we should be building for scholarly research in the twenty-first century. Borgman describes the roles that information technology plays at every stage in the life cycle of a research project and contrasts these new capabilities with the relatively stable system of scholarly communication, which remains based on publishing in journals, books, and conference proceedings. No framework for the impending “data deluge” exists comparable to that for publishing. Analyzing scholarly practices in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, Borgman compares each discipline's approach to infrastructure issues. In the process, she challenges the many stakeholders in the scholarly infrastructure—scholars, publishers, libraries, funding agencies, and others—to look beyond their own domains to address the interaction of technical, legal, economic, social, political, and disciplinary concerns. Scholarship in the Digital Age will provoke a stimulating conversation among all who depend on a rich and robust scholarly environment.

Genres: Nonfiction, Library Science, Research, Technology, Grad School, Reference, School

336 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2007

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book that I've read for my library course that actually felt "academic" as opposed to simply a textbook or a professional how-to. I think it's probably the most useful and relevant book for my course. All the theory that has been discussed by my lecturers is included in this book. The book addresses the way scholars communicate, but in a way that encompasses nearly all the work of an academic library, from digitization, digital repositories, eBooks and ejournals, the impact of the web etc. It covers all domains from scientific, social science and the arts and humanities. While the coverage is very broad the author is still able to go into reasonable detail about different areas, and outlines the differences in disciplines. I have only a few criticisms of this book, it was a little repetitive in places and it didn't pay enough attention to the non-published methods of communication. It seemed to focus entirely on journals, databases and monographs and seemed to ignore more informal communication such as email lists, and online discussions, which are definitely transforming scholarly communication today. An interesting reference full of useful information and a good presentation of issues within the academic library and the university today.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is nine chapters long, but each chapter is broken into much shorter sub-sections: I think this is supposed to make Borgman's arguments clearer and easier to follow, but her writing is already pretty clear, and the combination of short declarative sentences without much linking between them plus short sections made the book feel very choppy and dry to me. Still, there are interesting bits: I especially liked chapter 5, "The Discontinuity of Scholarly Publishing," which talks about how the growth of digital publishing (formal and informal) is changing things. Her final point seems to be that we need to think about where we want to end up: information, she argues, is the most valuable part of scholarly information infrastructure, and the value of the information and the infrastructure can both be enhanced if we focus on making an infrastructure for information, rather than just an infrastructure of it.

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had to read this for school...otherwise, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. Some of it was interesting, but most of it was dry and repetitive.

[Rahmad · Rating 3 out of 5]

How the Internet is changing the way scholarship is conducted. The glut of data, content, and potential for collaborations is an opportune time to advance how we do scholarship.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very thorough and informative.

[Samantha]

I'm missing library school.

[ACRL]

Read by ACRL Member of the Week Erika Linke. Learn more about Erika on the ACRL Insider blog.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviewed in 'Prometheus' 26 (3), Book reviews, ed. T.E. Ray.
As an trained information specialist, this one was interesting. But no one has the answer to the problems of controlling (and I mean 'controlling' in the archivist/librarian's sense of the word) all the stuff on the internet... perhaps least of all the information specialists, not because they don't know their stuff, but because they've got a much better grasp of the much bigger picture.

[Coral · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd like to give this a more thorough read in the future.

[March · Rating 5 out of 5]

Using it for my MA thesis.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Important. Dry.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mind-numbing.

[Ramona · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's fine. It's just description, nothing offensive so nothing to like.