Building Information Infrastructures for Social Worlds - The Role of Classifications and Standards

  • Authors:
  • Geoffrey C. Bowker;Susan Leigh Star

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • Community Computing and Support Systems, Social Interaction in Networked Communities [the book is based on the Kyoto Meeting on Social Interaction and Communityware, held in Kyoto, Japan, in June 1998]
  • Year:
  • 1998

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Abstract

Through an analysis of information systems in medical communities - notably the development of the International Classification of Diseases and the design of a Nursing Interventions Classification scheme - we argue that community systems designers necessarily build for multiple social worlds simultaneously. So doing, we argue, they make a series of significant social and political choices. We draw some design implications from this observation: notably arguing for a sensitivity to the nature of the work of representing a community to itself.