Research interests

My research agenda considers collections as a form of creative expression. Collections are groups of information-bearing objects, typically selected, described, and arranged for a particular purpose. Physical libraries are collections; so are digital libraries, archival collections, and museum databases, as are the books in your office. Supermarkets are collections of food for sale, and Facebook is a collection of personal profiles. I explore the means by which collections apply an interpretive frame to the resources that they gather, enacting a particular viewpoint onto their contents.

In his well-known article concerning the nature of documents, Michael Buckland discusses Suzanne Briet's contention that an antelope in a zoo is a type of document. Extending Briet's ideas, Buckland suggests that an object's significance as information arises from the system in which it is embedded. The antelope in its natural habitat, grazing on the African savanna, does not act as a document, because there is no reason to notice it. However, the same antelope in a zoo does act as a document, because it has been selected and placed within a sort of collection, with the circumstances of its description and arrangement focusing on certain characteristics. The antelope in a zoo is framed as a type of specimen, acting as a representative of African wildlife.

I investigate how collections (like the zoo) suggest particular meanings for their contents (like the antelope). As another example, I might compare how a women's bookstore presents a different idea of feminism than a public library or than the online bookstore Amazon, by looking at the different books selected for each collection, the different categories used to describe and relate the books in each collection, and the ways that the books are arranged on physical or virtual shelves.

My work to explore the expressive character of document collections focuses on three related areas:

• Theory, or how collections generate interpretations (continuing with Buckland and Briet's famous antelope, how a zoo might work to present an antelope as a representative specimen of a particular [exotic] habitat).

• Design, or how we might create collections to communicate in this way (how to systematically and purposefully design zoos in order to convey particular arguments about antelopes).

• Criticism, or how we might assess collections as expressive media (how to describe, rigorously and precisely, the success or failure of a particular zoo at making an argument about antelopes).