Big Data, Little Data: Scholarship in the Networked World
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-10-2016-0222 |
| Published date | 03 April 2017 |
| Date | 03 April 2017 |
| Pages | 391-391 |
| Author | Philip Calvert |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Book reviews
Big Data, Little Data: Scholarship in the Networked World
By Christine L. Borgman
The MIT Press
Cambridge, MA
2015
383 pp.
US$32.00 hard cover
ISBN: 978-0-262-02856-1
Review DOI 10.1108/EL-10-2016-0222
There can be few people working as information managers who have not heard of Big Data.
When it makes the cover of the Wall Street Journal, you know it has become mainstream. But
as Borgman points out in this book, having access to the right data is more useful than
simply acquiring more data, and to explain her title a bit more, the right data can be “little
data”. We also have to accept, and as information managers we know this, that sometimes
there is simply no data or at least none we can legitimately access. Moreover, data sharing is
difcult, and incentives to do so are largely ineffective, and the practices of data management
vary widely between disciplines. The author, considered an authority on scholarly
communication, argues that data have no value or meaning in isolation; they exist within a
knowledge infrastructure of organisations, people, research and data management
practices, technologies, material objects and relationships. In the rst chapter, she sets out
six “provocations” meant to inspire a discussion about the uses of data in scholarship. They
are: who controls the data that determine how the value of the data can be exploited and by
whom; understanding the signicant features of data helps us realise what can be shared
across disciplines and what cannot; the function of much scholarly communication has
remained unchanged, but the role of data as publication needs to be examined from the
perspective of diverse stakeholders; providing open access to data has implications for
scholars, librarians and others stakeholders that is still poorly understood; as the knowledge
infrastructures evolve to accommodate open access, social media and other challenges, some
stakeholders gain but others lose; research funding is usually short term, but the knowledge
infrastructure needs long-term investment. The provocations are explored in the remaining
ten chapters of the book. Four chapters offer an overview of data and scholarship. The next
three chapters are case studies of data practices in the sciences, the social sciences and the
humanities. The author then considers the implications of her ndings for scholarly practice
and research policy, including the difcult topic of ethics. What Borgman is trying to do is
provide an agenda for further discourse, as this is a subject that will only grow in importance
as increasingly more data are produced. For such a complex subject, this book is very
well-written and it should be comprehensible to an average undergraduate student.
Philip Calvert
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Book reviews
391
TheElectronic Library
Vol.35 No. 2, 2017
pp.391-394
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