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For me it's helpful to understand a discipline by looking at the types of classes someone undertaking it might enroll in/teach. I found the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics at Indiana University Bloomington in my surfing and thought it might be helpful for others as well to get a sense of what a primary course of SI study might entail. Perhaps most helpful though is that the center provides a history of the term, "social informatics" and a few foundational documents (nearly all by the center's namesake) of the discipline.

Does 1996 seem like it was a long time ago? Not sure, but I thought that getting some foundational information was very helpful!

While exploring the ACM journal today, I came across the article below that kind of relates to this thread. It talks about the growing popularity of "Informatics" (in general)as a college/university discipline, and how and why it has evolved as an off-shoot of Computer Science. http://cacm.acm.org.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/magazines/2010/2/69363-why-an-informatics-degree/fulltext

Social Networking is not really about networking; a brief history of social media websites (the timeline on launch dates still surprises me)

Another way to take the library away from the library. I'm interested to learn more about that "entire library experience" to launch soon.

I got to play with the Biblion app a couple of weeks ago at work; the developers, Potion (http://www.potiondesign.com/#/home) have created a whole slew of incredible educational exhibits/experiences. I think overall mobile apps are a really interesting direction for digital libraries - making them increasingly portable and interactive. I remember feeling a bit of excitement in my interaction with the materials from the Biblion app in which my own fingers, rather than an extension of them in the form of a mouse, turned pages, rotated objects, pressed buttons, etc. - a stark difference from interacting with digital libraries that contain similar types of artifacts. I'm interested to see how the web-version of the Biblion app compares - in physical presentation and affective impact.

Wow! I'm so glad that you posted this! This makes history so accessible and interesting, and I'm looking forward to installing it asap on my ipad right now! I wish I knew about it this past semester for my junior high American history class I taught; they would have loved this.

You should! :) She's a librarian and advocate who's been writing and blogging about the social effects of technology for years. I've been reading her blog librarian.net since 1998. This link is to one her recent talks about the digital divide...its history and what it means now.

And she's got a new book out - http://www.amazon.com/Without-Net-Librarians-Bridging-Digital/dp/1598844539/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1307356401&sr=8-3

Social informatics is not explicitly mentioned in this article. However, I think it gives us direct insight into crafting our own definition of the term and its application. Bates looks at the overall domain of information science, and how we, as members of that discipline, can break free of the idea (which may have changed a bit since its writing in 1999) that there's no content to LIS education and practice, just structure (i.e., the core of our profession is to organize other discipline's information). Most applicable to our discussion, at least in this point of the semester, seems this excerpt: "In comparison to other social and behavioral science fields, we are always looking for the red thread of information in the social texture of people's lives. When we study people we do so with the purpose of understanding information creation, seeking, and use. We do not just study people in general. The rest of the social sciences do various forms of that. Sometimes this can be a very fine distinction; other times it is very easy to see. In communications research, a cousin to our field, the emphasis is on the communication process and its effects on people; in information science we study that process in service of information transfer. For another example, there are social scientists today who are observing people doing collaborative work through new types of networked systems in the field of computer-supported co-operative work (CSCW) . The sociologist or social psychologist identifies and describes the network of relationships and the social hierarchy that develops under these circumstances. They may examine the impact of technology on those social relationships and on the work of the individuals involved. The information scientist, on the other hand, follows the information the way Woodward and Bernstein "followed the money" in their Watergate investigations. That's the red thread in the social tapestry. When we look at that social hierarchy, we ar

In this article, Hargittai likens the digital divide continuum to the varied dimensions of literacy and concludes that addressing the digital divide requires refinement in the understanding of use and skill - and incorporating those varied uses and skills into educational curricula. She explains that "the history of literacy shows that our understanding of functional literacy has evolved considerably over time requiring flexibility in education policy to keep up with the changing landscape." Full Citation: Hargittai, E. (2003). The Digital Divide and What to do About It. In D. C. Jones (Ed.), New Economy Handbook. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Pope Benedict XVI made history today when he tweeted for the first time. Benedict's tweet read: "Dear Friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI".