Michael Buckland

Professor Emeritus

Focus

Information, culture, and society. Library services. Bibliography and discovery. History and theory of documentation.

Biography

My professional experience as a librarian in the UK and the US focused on the management of university libraries, the design of improved services, and better support for search and discovery. This work is reflected three books: Library Services in Theory and Context, 2nd ed. (1988), Information and Information Systems (1991), and Redesigning Library Services (1992). I have also written on the history and theory of documentation, including a biography of the designer of the first electronic search engine, Emanuel Goldberg and his Knowledge Machine (2006). A recent book, Information and Society (MIT Press, 2017), provides a very concise introduction to a complex area. My best-known publication is an article “Information as thing” (JASIS 1991: 351-360). More at http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/.