Visualizing information in the records and archives management (RAM) disciplines. Using Engelhardt’s graphical framework

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-06-2016-0017
Pages234-255
Date20 November 2017
Published date20 November 2017
AuthorPauline Joseph,Jenna Hartel
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management,Information management & governance
Visualizing information in the
records and archives management
(RAM) disciplines
Using Engelhardts graphical framework
Pauline Joseph
Department of Information Studies, Curtin University,
Perth, Australia, and
Jenna Hartel
Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to explore the concept of information in records and archives management
(RAM) from a fresh, visual perspective by using arts-informed methodology and the draw-and-write
technique.
Design/methodology/approach Students and practitioners of RAM in Australia were asked to
answer the question, what is information?ina drawing and then to describe the drawing in words.This
produced a data set of 255 drawings of information or iSquares,for short. Compositional interpretation and
a framework of graphic representations by Engelhardt wereapplied to determine how participants envision
informationand what the renderings imply for RAM.
Findings The images reveal an overwhelming recognition in RAM of the diversity of media formats
of information and the hyperconnectivity of information in networked information systems; and
illustrate the central place of human beings within these systems. These ndings offer striking,
accessible illustrations of major concepts in RAM and enable new understandings through the
construction of stories.
Practical implications There are both pedagogical applications and practical implications of this
work for students, practitioners and knowledge workers. The graphical representations of information
in this research deepen the understanding of textual denitions of information. The data set of iSquares
provides opportunities to create new storyboards to explain information denitions, practices and
phenomena in RAM disciplines, and, to explain related concepts such as data, information, knowledge
and wisdom hierarchy.
Originality/value This is the rst study in RAM disciplines to provide visual illustrations of
informationusing graphical image representations.
Keywords Information management, Records management, Archives management,
Draw-and-write technique, Visual arts methodology
Paper type Research Paper
The authors thank Curtin University for the Visiting Fellow Grant that enabled this international
collaborative research between Curtin University and the University of Toronto. The authors also
record their thank you to Curtin students and RAM professionals in Australia for participating in this
research.
Aspects of this paper were presented at the: Australian Society of Archivists (ASA) Conference;
the Records Information Management Professionals of Australasia Conference (RIMPA) in 2015, 2016
and the International Council of Archives Congress Conference in 2016.
RMJ
27,3
234
Received20 June 2016
Revised11 October 2016
Accepted26 November 2016
RecordsManagement Journal
Vol.27 No. 3, 2017
pp. 234-255
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/RMJ-06-2016-0017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0956-5698.htm
Introduction
All academic disciplines and associated professions benet from thoughtful contemplation
of their central concepts. In recordsand archives management (RAM) elds, Upward (1996,
1997) developed the useful concept of a record continuum, a unied strategy for the
management of both records and archives. Oliver and Foscarini (2014) added the idea of
informatics, arguing that as recordkeeping is a process involving people, it is heavily
affected by organizational culture. Numerous technical standards and functional
specications guide the implementationof RAM programs, systems and best practices, but
the style and format of theorizing has been rathernarrow and homogenous: that is, typically
the work uses philosophical analysis to interrogate concepts or the systems analysis
paradigm, and in most cases the resultingstatements take the form of words.
Yet, words are only one of several forms of thought and communication. We live, work
and learn in increasingly dynamic, multimedia environments. There has been a pictorial
turn in society to favor images (Mitchell, 2005). On an average more than 250 million
photographs are exchanged on Facebook(Kotenko, 2013) and four billion videos are viewed
on YouTube, every day (Smith, 2015). The explosion of visual medium suggests that
humans possess multipleintelligences (Gardner, 1983) and have a wide-ranging appetite for
media that invoke every sense and way of knowing.
Keeping pace with these changes in popular culture, scholars in the social sciences are
adopting new methodologies that feature more creative multimedia and multisensory
techniques. For example, arts-informedmethodology combines the systematic and rigorous
qualities of conventionalqualitative approaches with the artistic and imaginative featuresof
the arts. Visual research (Prosser and Loxley, 2008) uses images to learn about the social
world, and provides an alternativeor complement to inquiry based upon words or numbers.
Sensory ethnography (Pink,2009) is based on the understanding that human meaning does
not emerge from language alone but fromour bodily being in the world.
Information studies, the parent discipline of RAM, are methodologically conservative
and have fallen somewhat behind these trends, except for a few recent breakthroughs. For
example, in 2011, Hartel launched the rst arts-informed, visual study of the concept of
information in the eld of library and information science. Finding extant denitions of
information to be narrowly conceived, formulated exclusively in words, and often
inaccessible to students and scholars alike,she sought a commonsense and inspiring visual
alternative, exploring how people visualize the concept of information by applying an
empirical method known as the draw-and-write technique (Pridmore and Bendelow, 1995).
Research subjects are given a piece of white art paper and asked to respond to the question,
What is information?in the form of a drawing, and thento write a few words about their
drawing on the reverse side of the paper. The data-gathering exercise produces a compact
piece of visual and textualdata called an iSquare.
After analyzing drawings collected from students at a North American iSchool, Hartel
reported her ndings in publications and conferences of information science (Hartel, 2015,
2014a,2014b;Hartel and Savolainen, 2016). As instances of arts-informed methodology,
iSquare results have been displayed as interactive exhibitions at conferences; and a sample
of the corpus is available as an online exhibition at www.iSquares.info. The iSquare
drawing techniquehas also been used in classrooms as a pedagogical strategy to explainthe
concept of information visually to library students (Hartel, 2014c). Overall, iSquares bring
information science into the visual Information Age and create a richer multimedia
genealogy for a beloved centralconcept(Hartel, 2017).
Motivated by the iSquare study, the lead author of this paper sought to bring the same
arts-informed, visual perspectiveto the concept of information in the discipline of RAM in a
Engelhardts
graphical
framework
235

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