Information Research Weblog

Hello everyone - you've probably wondering where I've been this past month. Well - three weeks of it was holiday in sunny Italy - continuous sunshine and mid-30s temperatures for three weeks is difficult to come by in the UK! The other week has simply been catching up with things, three days at Leeds University Business School - my current UK employer - and one day of interviewing on a project on the provision of broadband access for disadvantaged groups in the community.

I had pretty well decided to draw a line under the Weblog, since it isn't really fulfilling the original intention of providing a forum for the discussion of the papers published in Information Research - instead, I've simply been drawing attention to things that might be of interest to the IR readership. Keeping that up, however, is more trouble than it's worth, since it rarely evokes any response.

The interesting question is, 'Why do discussion groups in the information science, information management, information systems area rarely provoke discussion of substantive issues?' The mailings in lists like LIS-BAILER, ASIS-L, KNOW-ORG and others consist generally of announcements of conferences, occasional calls for help with a project, student e-mail questionnaires, and the like. But how often does anyone address research issues? Pretty well never is the answer - take a look at the archives:

• ASIS-L
• LIS-BAILER
• KNOW-ORG

Is it that people are simply too busy? Or is that the research is generally solitary, with little in the way of a team approach, or has the dreaded Research Assessment Exercise in the UK provoked such paranoia that people are unwilling to share ideas any longer?

Whatever the answer, it's not really worth trying to provoke interest, since the interest seems not to be there to provoke.

I'll keep the Weblog going, but, in future, I shan't be trying to make regular postings, but simply post something when it seems more than marginally interesting.