Scientific Work and the Usage of Digital Scientific Information - Some Notes on Structures, Discrepancies, Tendencies, and Strategies

The article discusses changes in scientific work (academic and applied) associated with new potentials, but also coercions of information technologies. Background for this interest is the experience gained in several digital library projects that inclinations and willingness to use these technical possibilities is much less common than the developers of these systems, and we all, tended to think in recent years. This seems to be true even in those scientific disciplines which were and are at the forefront of the development, e.g. physics, mathematics, etc. The background for this observation is discussed looking at general economic and social changes, viewing the environments of work in the scientific sphere, the contents and their quantity and quality of supply in scientific IT systems, the user side in their communities of practice, and the technological and organizational basis of scientific information. Some strategic issues to improve the situation are discussed in the final part of the paper.

[1]  M. Castells.  Rise of the Network Society: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture , 1996 .

[2]  Chris Benner.  Work in the New Economy: Flexible Labor Markets in Silicon Valley , 2002 .

[3]  Geneva L. Henry.  On-line Publishing in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities , 2003, D Lib Mag..

[4]  Sandra Payette,et al.  The Mellon Fedora Project , 2002, ECDL.

[5]  Rudi Schmiede.  Digital library activities in germany the german digital library program global info , 1999, Proceedings IEEE Forum on Research and Technology Advances in Digital Libraries.

[6]  David Knoke,et al.  Changing Organizations: Business Networks in the New Political Economy , 2000 .

[7]  Gernot Böhme,et al.  Kritische Theorie der Technik Und der Natur , 2003 .

[8]  Wolfgang Meier,et al.  SozioNet: Networking Social Science Resources , 2003, ECDL.

[9]  Rudi Schmiede,et al.  Towards the integration of digital library applications via web services for use in a scientific workspace , 2004 .

[10]  D. Bell.  The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society , 1973 .

[11]  Rudi Schmiede.  Informatisierung und gesellschaftliche Arbeit: Strukturveränderungen von Arbeit und Gesellschaft , 1996 .

[12]  M. Castells.  The rise of the network society , 1996 .

[13]  Dan Schiller,et al.  Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System , 1999 .

[14]  H. Spinner.  Die Architektur der Informationsgesellschaft : Entwurf eines wissensorientierten Gesamtkonzepts , 1998 .

[15]  Rudi Schmiede.  Informatisierung, Formalisierung und kapitalistische Produktionsweise: Entstehung der Informationstechnik und Wandel der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit , 1996 .

[16]  Mattias Smångs,et al.  Changing Organizations. Business Networks in the New Political Economy , 2002 .

[17]  M. Castells.  The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture , 1999 .

[18]  Herbert Van de Sompel,et al.  Rethinking Scholarly Communication: Building the System that Scholars Deserve , 2004, D Lib Mag..

[19]  E. Wenger,et al.  Communities and technologies , 2003 .

[20]  D. Bell.  The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, a venture in Social Forecasting , 1974 .

[21]  Chris Benner,et al.  Work in the New Economy , 2002 .

[22]  Chestalene Pintozzi.  Every Librarian a Leader: Rethinking scholarly communication , 1996 .