More About this Symposium

This symposium invites contributions that explore the role of information and information systems – for instance, databases, card catalogs, file formats, data standards, archival finding aids, etc – in fiction and popular media. We also invite explorations of fictions about these systems: that is, the not-always-factual beliefs, stories or tall tales about information systems that guide users’ behavior and practices. Submissions might include:

• Studies of information practices, systems, infrastructures in fictional settings, such as novels, movies, television.
• Speculative, imaginative, and fiction-based methods/approaches to studying information
• Studies about fiction deploying a distinctively LIS or IS perspective (e.g., reading studies)
• Studies of “folk” beliefs about information systems.

We particularly welcome submissions of in-progress work that might benefit from feedback at an early stage, and of work that takes particularly “information science-y” approaches, such as information modeling, information practices/seeking/use, knowledge organization, information literacy, etc.