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ASIS&T’s European Chapter warmly invites you to enjoy coffee and a chat with editors

Prof. Jack Andersen & Prof. Joacim Hansson

Tuesday, March 24th, 2026, 1-2pm CET (see https://tinyurl.com/EC-classBook for times in other zones)
Register here: https://www2.asist.org/ap/Events/Register/qWFRAmgFkCQCe

About the Book:
The contributions in Exploring Contemporary Classification Practices analyse various aspects of classification and their importance to contemporary debates surrounding cultural heritage and information access. Specific focus is on systems of classification, media technologies, and cultural institutions (such as libraries, archives, and museums) and how they respond to challenges, including classificatory bias, truth, neutrality, institutional tradition, and technological innovation. Raising awareness of classification practices in modern culture serves to emphasize how sorting things into categories is both an everyday accomplishment and a highly cultural and political activity with consequences for those who are classified and for those who classify. Throughout this book, ‘classification’ is defined as the practice and activity of systematically ordering and categorizing entities to bring structure and understanding to diverse contexts. This book addresses several timely issues both in terms of theoretical advancement and empirical diversity. The scholarly discussion on the classification and organization of knowledge has developed with digital technologies from a bibliographic paradigm into something much wider, as the need for metadata and classification has become critical for usability and legitimacy. This development has also led research on classification and knowledge organization to confront a new, post-humanist reality with not only emerging varieties of information currents in society, but also the development of new theoretical and methodological strands, such as post-colonial and intersectional perspectives, and digital humanities methodologies. In doing so, this book seeks to address critical questions for the archives, library, and museum sectors concerning the organization of information. The book’s Website:  https://www.routledge.com/Exploring-Contemporary-Classification-Practices-Organizing-Information-Technological-Change-and-Ideological-Contestation/Andersen-Hansson/p/book/9781032997230

About the Editors:
Jack Andersen (b. 1973) is an Associate Professor, PhD, at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He has been an active researcher since the late 1990s. ​​In his research Andersen is focused on basic conceptual questions about classification and how to understand its role and power in modern culture. Andersen employs genre theory, social theory, and materialist digital media theory to explore classification, aiming to comprehend it as both a facet of communication and materiality. Since the mid-2000s 2000s Andersen has had a leading role in launching and consolidating genre as a research object in information studies. He has written, edited, and co-edited two books in English: Genre in Information Studies (Andersen, 2015), The Organization of Knowledge: Caught Between Global Structures and Local Meaning (Andersen & Skouvig, 2017) along with numerous scholarly articles in information, communication, and media studies journals. Andersen is on the editorial boards of Journal of Documentation, Sakprosa, Nordic Journal of Library and Information Studies, co-director Center for Genre Studies, UCPH, 2016-2019, member of the advisory board for the research network Genre Across Borders, member of the steering committee of the Nordic Nonfiction Research Network 2018-2019, member of the coordination committee of the Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES)-research group §Future Society and Democracy in Europe 2023-2026 as well as co-founder of the Nordic Research Network on Classification 2023. More information and a complete list of publications can be found at Andersen’s University of Copenhagen website: https://comm.ku.dk/staff/?pure=en/persons/110998 

Joacim Hansson (b. 1966) is professor of Information Studies at the Department of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University, Sweden. His research focuses on three main areas: Library Studies, with a special focus on the institutional identities of public libraries in contemporary democratic development; Document Theory; and Knowledge Organization with a special focus on classification theory and the relationship between metadata practices and societal development, from both historical and contemporary perspectives. He is Academic Leader at the European University for Well-being (EUniWell) and co-leader of the Linnaeus University Critical Knowledge Organization Research Group. He has authored ten books in Sweden and internationally, including Libraries and Identity: the Role of Institutional Self-image and Identity in the Emergence of New Types of Libraries (Chandos 2010), Educating Librarians in the Contemporary University: an Essay on iSchools and the Emancipatory Resilience in Library and Information Science (Library Juice Press, 2019), and Bibliographic Classification: from Mimetic Representation to Isomorphic Documentality (MIT Press, 2025). More information and a complete list of publications can be found at Hansson’s Linnaeus University website: https://lnu.se/en/staff/joacim.hansson/

About the session:
The editors will provide an overview of the book and place it within the context of establishing an international cross-disciplinary network of scholars on classification research. 

Bring your own coffee!