The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) has awarded it’s 2018 Best Information Science Book Award to Information and Society, by School of Information emeritus professor Michael Buckland.
Information and Society is a short, informal account of society’s ever-increasing dependence on a complex multiplicity of messages, records, documents, and data. In the book, a volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Professor Buckland explores the influence of information on what we know, the role of communication and recorded information in our daily lives, and how we find information. He shows that all this involves human perception, social behavior, changing technologies, and issues of trust.
The ASIS&T awards jury called Information and Society “a concise and easy-to-understand introduction to the central topics of information science … In its exploration of the influence of information on our daily lives and on our society, it touches upon many central questions, like what a document is, how information can be organized effectively, and how it can be discovered and selected from large collections.”
“This book not only brings together the central aspects of the field in a consistent manner,” said the awards jury, “but also conveys the importance of information science content and approaches to a broader audience. It, therefore, puts information science research into a wider context and shows how related fields can benefit from it.”
“The scope and nature of the I School’s concerns need continuous examination, and our field is rarely interpreted to the wider world,” said Professor Buckland. “I have tried to do both." On winning the award, Professor Buckland said: “The book is largely based on ideas developed in the School, so this award is especially gratifying.”
Professor Buckland has served on the faculty of the School of Information since 1976 and was the dean of the school from 1976 to 1984; during his deanship, he oversaw the renaming of the school from the School of Librarianship to the School of Library and Information Studies. From 1983 to 1987, he served as the assistant vice president for library plans and policies for the nine-campus University of California system. Buckland continues to lead the I School’s Friday afternoon Information Access Seminars.
The ASIS&T award’s purpose is to recognize the outstanding book in information science published during the preceding calendar year. The award is given to the author(s) whose book is judged to have made the most outstanding contribution in the field of information science during the year. Professor Buckland will accept the award at the 2018 meeting of the ASIS&T which will be held in Vancouver, Canada, November 10-14, 2018.
