Opening the black box of “relevance work”: A domain analysis

  • Authors:

  • Betsy Van der Veer Martens;Connie Van Fleet

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Library and Information Studies, University of Oklahoma, 4502 East 41st Street, Room 1J30, Tulsa, Oklahoma74135;School of Library and Information Studies, University of Oklahoma, 120 Bizzell Library, Norman, Oklahoma73019

  • Venue:
  • Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

In response to Hjørland's recent call for a reconceptualization of the foundations of relevance, we suggest that the sociocognitive aspects of intermediation by information agencies, such as archives and libraries, are a necessary and unexplored part of the infrastructure of the subject knowledge domains central to his recommended “view of relevance informed by a social paradigm” (2010, p. 217). From a comparative analysis of documents from 39 graduate-level introductory courses in archives, reference, and strategic/competitive intelligence taught in 13 American Library Association-accredited library and information science (LIS) programs, we identify four defining sociocognitive dimensions of “relevance work” in information agencies within Hjørland's proposed framework for relevance: tasks, time, systems, and assessors. This study is intended to supply sociocognitive content from within the relevance work domain to support further domain analytic research, and to emphasize the importance of intermediary relevance work for all subject knowledge domains. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.