Turn, turn, turn

Introduction

To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven
(Seeger, 1954)

Turn, turn, turn is a hit 1965 folk song written by Pete Seeger and performed by the Byrds. It expresses the reality of a changing, or turning, world in which there is a time and place for everything. Applied to an academic context, the song suggests a natural ebb and flow of ideas and perspectives. In that light, this paper describes a series of turns that have occurred in library and information science.

A turn refers to a recognizable intellectual project in which a group of scholars enthusiastically embrace a new set of theoretical, methodological, or substantive commitments. These alternative visions typically critique the status quo and focus attention on a different research agenda or frontier. Such developments generate landmark publications, spawn special issues of journals, and shape the content of conferences. Turns can happen to a singular research area or in parallel across many disciplines. Of note, turns are a lower order than paradigm shifts for they do not necessarily disrupt the fundamental research questions of a field.

Though constituted by ideas, turns are social phenomena usually driven by inspired, articulate, persuasive champions. The 'turners' may be established scholars or precocious and ascendant juniors; both assert the originality and importance of their work within the context of the turn. The champions of turns often use dramatic and binary rhetorical strategies that elevate a favored approach over others and suggest problems or shortcomings to other perspectives.

To illustrate, one well-known turn is the linguistic turn (Rorty, 1967) within philosophy of the early 20^th century. It marked a change in emphasis from knowledge about the nature of an external world to how language works and is used. The cultural turn (Best, 2007) is a movement beginning in the early 1970s across the humanities and social sciences that made culture the focus of contemporary debates and challenged the dominance of positivist epistemologies. Often one turn invokes another as the material turn (Roberts, 2017) of the 1990s was a response to the linguistic turn that eschewed the primacy of language and focused upon the role of everyday objects in human action.

This paper for the 10^th Conceptions of Library and Information Science conference, examines seven turns within library and information science and its narrower specialties of information retrieval and information behaviour. It is based upon the author’s reflection about the intellectual history of library and information science and a selective literature review of theoretical and historical writings. The start of the study is 1986, the publication date of a landmark paper which advocated a turn from a physical or systems-based to a cognitive or user-centred approach (Dervin & Nilan, 1986). Due to space limitations, not every intellectual movement within library and information science is covered and an effort has been made to represent significant and diverse turns relevant to the Conceptions of Library and Information Science audience. Each turn is profiled with attention to its origins, tenets, key players, signal concepts, influential publications, concomitant methods, and enduring contributions. For quick identification in the future (and for fun), each turn is also assigned a visual logo that appears in Table 1, which summarizes the seven turns.

As a point of departure, information science was and is ‘concerned with that body of knowledge relating to the origination, collection, organization, storage, retrieval, interpretation, transmission, transformation, and utilization of information' (Borko, 1968, p. 3). In the 1960s, ground-breaking information retrieval research programs, such as the Cranfield and SMART (System for the Mechanical Analysis and Retrieval of Text) experiments, established a unifying physical paradigm (Ellis, 1992). The physical paradigm featured an empirical method for testing the variables within an information retrieval system. For instance, in a laboratory-like setting, research would with a test collection of documents to determine the performance of index languages or search algorithms.

Cognitive turn

Then, in the 1980s, at the crossroads of information retrieval and information behaviour research, a cognitive turn occurred (Belkin, 1990). A breakthrough idea at the time was Brookes’ (1980) compact, fundamental equation of information science: K[S]+ΔI=K[S+ΔS. In a nutshell, it formulated the mediating role of internal knowledge structures during information processing. The cognitive viewpoint upheld the idea that an information retrieval system should reflect the thought world of the user, which must therefore become the foremost object of inquiry.

This turn was anchored and amplified by a watershed Annual Review of Information Science and Technology chapter on 'Information Needs and Uses' by Brenda Dervin and Michael Nilan (1986). It contrasted the traditional physical paradigm with an alternative user-centred approach. The former and latter differed, respectively, in terms of their commitment to objective versus subjective information; a mechanistic and passive versus active user; external behaviour versus internal cognitions; atomistic versus wholistic views of experience; chaotic versus systematic individuality; and quantitative versus qualitative research. The dramatic, oppositional, congratulatory rhetoric that animates turns is evident when Dervin and Nilan call the moment a 'struggle to break out' of constraining world views and a 'quantum and revolution leap' (p. 24).

One quintessential, anthropomorphic concept of this turn was sense-making (Dervin, 1983), a theory and methodology to examine what happens when an individual’s internal sense is exhausted and a new understanding is needed to move forward. On a practical front, sense-making’s SITUATION-GAP-USE model informed a strategy for conducting a reference interview through neutral questions (Dervin & Dewdney, 1986). A second, exemplar idea of this turn was the anomalous states-of-knowledge (ASK) (Belkin, 1980), which posited that people in problem situations have incomplete or limited views that handicap their engagement with an information system. The ASK research program identified, among other things, the variety of problem situations and recommended ideal information seeking strategies. A third major concept of this turn was information need, which is the impulse that prompts information seeking. A model by Wilson (1981) asserted that information need itself is rooted in an individual’s physiological, cognitive, or affective needs.

Incidentally, Bates (2010) later suggested that Dervin & Nilan’s provocative claim of a sea-change was overblown as nuanced user-focused studies of information behaviour occurred throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, these include Menzel’s (1959, 1964) reports of formal and informal scientific communication practices and Paisely’s (1968) model of the information seeker as surrounded by layers of context. In the long run, the muscular cognitive/user-centred turn shifted library and information science research from its technical stronghold of information retrieval and bibliometrics to the social scientific study of human information behaviour, which arguably remains the field’s nexus today.

Affective turn

The cognitive turn opened a window into the thought world of the information seeker, where it became apparent that the mind is heavily influenced by the heart. Hence, the information seeker’s affective experience became a matter of keen interest in library and information science . Affect is an umbrella concept that encompasses both emotions and moods (Robbins & Judge, 2012).

The affective turn in library and information science dates to Constance Mellon’s (1986) perception of library anxiety. Her thorough study of undergraduates determined that the vast majority described their library visits in terms of fear. Soon thereafter, Carol Kuhlthau’s (1988, 1991) seminal investigations of high school students as they complete a course writing assignment generated a detailed account of the affective dimension of information seeking. Kuhlthau’s information search process (ISP) modelled six stages of the research process in which students felt apprehension, uncertainty, optimism, a dip in confidence, and ultimately heightened confidence—an emotional roller-coaster, of sorts. Likewise, Elfreda Chatman’s (1996) holistic ethnographies of the information worlds of marginalized populations (1996) struck novel, poignant, compassionate chords.

In the decade after these ground-breaking studies, there is evidence that the affective turn is here to stay. Notable pillars include Information and emotion: the emergent affective paradigm in information behaviour Research and Theory (Nahl & Bilal, 2007) as well as Lopatovska’s (2014) model of emotion in the online search process. This turn heralded the ascent of concomitant qualitative methods, such as ethnography, for accessing the subjective realm. Forevermore, the affective turn instilled a sensitivity, intimacy, and humanity into the heart of library and information science.

Neo-documentary turn

In the 1990s, the strong emphasis of the cognitive turn upon mental phenomena generated two counter-movements, including a conservative, materialist critique here called the neo-documentary turn. It brought library and information science back to its roots in the European documentation movement and Paul Otlet, a Belgian lawyer and bibliographer (Rayward, 1997). Otlet is considered by many to be a founder of information science as a century ago he envisioned and attempted to implement global, multimedia information infrastructures. The turn also draws upon the work of Suzanne Briet (Maack, 2004), a French documentalist who famously defined documents by their indexical qualities such as a scientific article, press release, or taxidermy mount of an antelope all point to the original bovid (Briet, 2006/1951).

Participants in this turn rally around Michael Buckland’s information-as-thing (1991), which argued that information has multiple forms and the most important of these within library and information science is its tangible manifestation as a document. In additional to the deeper and native historical wellsprings mentioned above, neo-documentalists are motivated by contemporary writings from sociologically-oriented intellectual outside library and information science, such as Foucault, Garfinkle, and Strauss, whose work situate documents more broadly within social life. For example, scientific facts are constructed by making documents of different sorts (Latour & Woolgar, 1979).

Danish historian of library and information science and avid neo-documentalist, Neils Lund, has consolidated these developments (Lund, 2009; Lund & Skare, 2010) and is a co-founder of The Document Academy (Lund & Buckland, 2009), an interdisciplinary think tank and annual conference. According to Lund, a document

…is 100% a physical phenomenon, 100% a social phenomenon, and 100% a mental phenomenon. Any document is a physical object as well as a social and mental object. The core issue is how these dimensions are interacting with each other in different ways… (Lund & Skare, p. 1638-1639)

Neo-documentalists within library and information science focus upon the properties and types of documents, their social and cultural construction within many different contexts, their changing nature in the digital age, and applied problems of documentation (e.g., retrieval, annotation, preservation, authorship, identity, intellectual property, among others). One particularly creative and timely expression of this turn is Gorichanaz’s dissertation (2018), an arts-informed, phenomenological study of self-portraits as documents.

Socio-cognitive turn

Alongside the neo-documentary turn of the 1990s, an alternative perspective emerged of seeing information phenomena as embedded in social, organizational, and professional contexts. This socio-cognitive turn (Jacob & Shaw, 1998), or collectivism (Talja, Tuominen & Savolainen, 2005), shifts attention from individual and internal knowledge structures to the outward and social construction of knowledge within communities.

A prolific crusader for this turn is Birger Hjørland, the architect of a socio-cognitive approach known as domain analysis (Hjørland & Albrechtsen, 1995; Hjørland, 2017). Domain analysis refutes the notion of universal information phenomena and focuses upon informational patterns within social worlds. One of the first, and still perhaps the best, example of domain analytic research is Bates’ (1996) study of humanities scholars, which establishes the special nature of humanistic knowledge and then uses it to explain how humanists interact with information systems such as Dialog. Translated to professional practice (Hjørland, 2002), domain analysis directs the librarian towards mastery of their subject area by producing literature guides, special classifications, and user studies, and to a strategic understanding of the history, culture, epistemology, and institutional dynamics of their fields.

The socio-cognitive turn might be considered a re-turn. In actuality, social perspectives flourished in the original visions of library and information science. Our first, slim textbook by Pierce Butler (1933) devotes one of its five chapters to The Sociological Problem and opens with a striking socio-cognitive statement, ‘SOCIETY [sic] probably contributes far more to the publication of a printed book than does the author who composes it’ (p. 31). Jesse Shera, Butler’s celebrated student, spent his lifetime championing social epistemology; that is, a version of library and information science oriented to ‘the production, flow, integration, and consumption of all forms of communicated thought throughout the entire social fabric’ (Shera, 1968, p. 9). Today, the socio-cognitive turn may have been absorbed into the accepted wisdom of library and information science for few students or scholars would deny its tenets.

Everyday life turn

In the early 2000s, proponents of an everyday life turn argued that vast swaths of the human experience had been neglected in library and information science research. Pointing to the preponderance of information behaviour studies of academia, youth education, professions, and work, they sought to understand and celebrate information phenomena associated with routine events such as ordering a pizza (which serves as the visual logo for this turn, see Figure 1). Included as a favored topic within the movement are pleasurable and profound life experiences, wherein information phenomena were hypothesized to be different (Kari & Hartel, 2007). Of historical note, decades earlier, the 1970s saw a smattering of everyday citizen information need studies (Zweizig & Dervin, 1977; Dervin & Nilan, 1986; Savolainen, 2010) and Bates (1974) had introduced the concept of life information--yet the research frontier remained nascent.

A turn was finally sparked by Savolainen’s (1995) ‘Everyday life information seeking: approaching information seeking in the context of way of life.’ The landmark article introduced the ELIS acronym and proposed Bordieu’s theory of habitus (1984) and the associated concept of way of life to explain and model day-to-day information practices. A second conceptual advance was Hektor’s dissertation (2001), What's the use? Internet and information behaviour in everyday life. It borrowed from time-use geography to identify seven daily routines (caring for oneself, caring for others, household care, reflection and recreation, transportation, procure and prepare food, gainful employment) and then associated information behaviour and activities with projects therein. Such cornerstone publications performed three necessary conceptual maneuvers for ELIS research: structuring time within everyday life, teasing apart life activities from information activities, and expanding information behaviour beyond seeking to include creating, manipulating, and sharing information.

Thanks to this turn, a plethora of familiar, entertaining, and meaningful experiences entered the boundaries of library and information science research and practice. For example, under the ELIS banner are reports of information phenomena in the paranormal (Kari, 2001), planning a wedding (McKenzie and Davies, 2010), collecting rubber duckies (Lee & Trace, 2009), and the hobby of gourmet cooking (Hartel, 2007, 2010). Significantly, this turn prepared our field to engage non-work, Internet-based information phenomena that have moved to centre stage of the Information Age, such as gaming, YouTube, and social media.

Social constructionist turn

The linguistic turn within the humanities and social sciences, mentioned earlier, made a late appearance in library and information science as the century changed. Since much of our work manipulates words (e.g., the design of information retrieval systems and classification systems), scholars sought guidance and inspiration from language-based theories and methodologies. To these ends, the social constructionist turn shifted analytical attention to the way that language, in the form of discourses, constitutes the shared knowledge base of society. Radically, champions of this view argued that library and information science ‘…should define its subject matter as conversations, not information’ (Tuominen, Talja & Savolainen, 2003, p. 562). To be clear, a social constructionist philosophy is expressed methodologically as discourse analysis (Frohmann, 1994; Budd, 2006), thereby this movement could also be called a discourse analytic turn.

A breakthrough paper of this turn was a critique of the cognitive turn. Frohmann’s (1992) discourse analysis of the language associated with the cognitive view revealed untoward assumptions about the information seeker. A more extensive example of the social constructionist approach is Talja’s (2001), Culture, and the library: an analysis of discourses. It reported how Finnish citizens use language to conceive of music libraries in contradictory ways. They talked about the music library as a tool for classical musical education, a resource for alternative genres, and an on-demand supplier of personal musical favorites--hence there is not one but three competing visions of the music library, each requiring its own operations. Another landmark and design-oriented paper proposed that the access mechanisms to digital libraries should be based upon the varied positions that exist within conversations and debates, rather than upon a singular, stable, topical architecture (Tuominen, Talja & Savolainen, 2003).

Methodologically, this turn brought a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of language and its crucial place in the library and information science enterprise. It heightened reflexivity, as scholars learned that talk is always positioned and never neutral. The inherent critical bent of social constructionism also softened the ground for later turns of the 2010s, associated with cultural and gender studies, not covered here due to space limitations.

Embodied turn

The embodied turn can be associated with research into information behaviour and information literacy. Devotees of this turn assert, ‘the corporeal experience has been ignored in information science research and it is time to bring the body back into the information field’ (Lloyd, 2010). Annemaree Lloyd, as a leader of the movement asks, ‘how does the body and the bodies of others act as an information source? How do we bring the body into focus, as the subject of research in the field?’ (Olsson & Lloyd, 2017). Of note, this turn might also have been called the practice turn (Cox 2012) because its enthusiasts likewise use theories of practice to account for the cultural shaping of the body.

The embodied turn draws upon social and cultural theories of the body by Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Goffman. Within library and information science, cornerstone empirical papers include Lloyd’s studies of firefighters (2007) and ambulance drivers (2009) who learn to do their work through social and corporeal modalities. Also influential are Olsson’s studies of theatre professionals (2010a, 2010b) and archaeologists (2016) whose senses are central to the information experience.

The embodied turn is the next logical step in a progression from mind>heart>body within library and information science research, aiming for a holistic understanding of the human information experience. Research within this turn has introduced innovative methods such as phenomenology (Katsiriou & Lin, 2017), autoethnography (Guzik, 2013), and sensory ethnography (Pink, 2009), which favors visual techniques. Recent work on this frontier is surveyed in a special double special of Library Trends on 'Information and the Body' (Cox, Griffin, Hartel, 2018; Bates, 2018).

Table 1: Summary of seven turns in library and information science, with visual logos. A more artful version of the table is available as an online PDF.

POINT OF DEPARTURE: THE PHYSICAL PARADIGM As a point of departure, library and information science was and is concerned with that body of knowledge relating to the origination, collection, organization, storage, retrieval, interpretation, transmission, transformation, and utilization of information. In the 1960s, ground-breaking information retrieval research programs, such as the Cranfield and SMART (System for the Mechanical Analysis and Retrieval of Text) experiments, established a unifying physical paradigm. The physical paradigm featured an empirical method for testing the variables within an information retrieval system. For instance, in a laboratory-like setting, research would with a test collection of documents to determine the performance of index languages or search algorithms.
	THE COGNITIVE TURN Then, in the 1980s, at the crossroads of information retrieval and information behaviour research, a cognitive turn occurred. It upheld the idea that an information retrieval system should reflect the thought world of the user, which must therefore become the foremost object of inquiry. This turn was anchored and amplified by a watershed Annual Review of Information Science and Technology chapter on 'Information Needs and Uses' by Brenda Dervin and Michael Nilan (1986b), which contrasted the traditional physical paradigm with an alternative user-centred approach. One quintessential, anthropomorphic concept of this turn was sense-making (Dervin, 1983), a theory and methodology to examine what happens when an individual’s internal sense is exhausted. A second, exemplar idea of this turn was Nick Belkin’s anomalous states-of-knowledge (1980). Wilson’s conception of information need (1981) also figured prominently. In the long run, the cognitive / user-centred turn shifted library and information science research from its technical stronghold of information retrieval and bibliometrics to the social scientific study of human information behaviour, which arguably remains the nexus of the field today.
	THE AFFECTIVE TURN In the affective turn of the 1990s, the information seeker’s emotional experience became a matter of keen interest. This new emphasis was sparked by Constance Mellon’s perception of library anxiety (1986) and Carol Kuhlthau’s seminal investigations of the emotional roller-coaster for high school students as they do a course writing assignment (1988, 1991), resulting in the Information Search Process model. Likewise, Elfreda Chatman’s holistic visions (1996) of the information worlds of marginalized populations struck novel, poignant, compassionate chords. This turn heralded the ascent of concomitant qualitative methods, such as ethnography, for accessing the subjective realm. Forevermore, the affective turn instilled a sensitivity, intimacy, and humanity into the heart of library and information science.
	THE NEO-DOCUMENTARY TURN The strong emphasis of the cognitive turn upon mental phenomena generated a neo-documentary turn, which dates to the 1990s. It brought library and information science back to its roots in the European Documentation movement and the work of its luminaries, Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet. Participants in this turn rally around Michael Buckland’s idea (1991) of information-as-thing and are motivated by contemporary writings from sociologically-oriented intellectual outside library and information science who write about documents, such as Foucault, Garfinkle, and Strauss. Neo-documentalists in LIS (Lund, 2009) focus upon the properties and types of documents, their social and cultural construction within many different contexts, their changing nature in the digital age, and applied problems of documentation (e.g., retrieval, annotation, preservation, authorship, identity, intellectual property, among others).
	THE SOCIO-COGNITIVE TURN Also in the 1990s, a perspective emerged of seeing information phenomena as embedded in social, organizational, and professional contexts. This socio-cognitive turn shifts attention from individual and internal knowledge structures to the outward and social construction of knowledge within communities. A prolific crusader for this turn is Birger Hjørland (2002), the architect of domain analysis, which orients to information phenomena within social worlds. The socio-cognitive turn might be considered a re-turn. In actuality, social perspectives flourished in the original visions of the field in the 1930s by Pierce Butler (1933) and his celebrated student, Jesse Shera (1968), whose social epistemology is a socio-cognitive idea. Today, the socio-cognitive turn has been absorbed into the accepted wisdom of library and information science.
	THE EVERYDAY LIFE TURN At the changeover of the century, proponents of an everyday life turn argued that vast swaths of the human experience had been neglected in LIS research. They sought to understand and celebrate information phenomena associated with routine or pleasurable and profound life experiences, wherein information phenomena were hypothesized to be different. This turn was sparked by Reijo Savolainen (1995) and Anders Hektor (2001), whose work performed three necessary conceptual maneuvers for ELIS research: structuring time within everyday life, teasing apart life activities from information activities, and expanding information behaviour beyond seeking to include creating, manipulating, and sharing information. Thanks to this turn, a plethora of familiar, entertaining, and meaningful experiences entered the boundaries of library and information science research and practice. Significantly, this turn prepared our field to engage non-work, Internet-based information phenomena that have moved to centre stage of the Information Age, such as gaming, YouTube, and social media.
	THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST TURN In the early 2000s, the social constructionist turn in LIS shifted analytical attention to the way that language, in the form of discourses, constitutes the shared knowledge base of society. Radically, champions of this view argued that library and information science should define its subject matter as conversations, not information (Tuominen, Talja & Savolainen, 2003). A breakthrough paper of this turn was Bernd Frohmann’s critique (1992) of the cognitive view point; a more extensive example is Sanna Talja’s analysis (2001) of the discourses surrounding the music library. Methodologically, this turn brought a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of language and its crucial place in the library and information science enterprise. The inherent critical bent of social constructionism also softened the ground for later turns of the 2010s, associated with cultural and gender studies.
	THE EMBODIED TURN The embodied turn of the mid-2000s can be associated with research into information behaviour and information literacy. Devotees of this turn ask: How do we bring the body into focus, as the subject of research in the field? (Olsson & Lloyd, 2017). This turn draws upon social theories of the body by Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, and Goffman. Within our literature, cornerstone papers include Annemaree Lloyd’s studies of firefighters (2007) and ambulance drivers (2009) as well as Michael Olsson’s studies of theatre professionals (2010a, 2010b) and archaeologists (2016). The embodied turn is the next logical step in a progression from mind > heart > body within library and information science research, aiming for a holistic understanding of the human information experience.

Discussion

The seven turns reviewed in this paper are distilled in Table 1 and each movement is assigned a visual logo. The visual logos may help students and scholars alike to recall the gist of each turn, for seen altogether they can be confusing. As another summarizing, pedagogical tool suited to our multimedia Information Age, this paper is available as a 22-minute video that is also entitled Turn, Turn, Turn (Hartel, 2019).

Table 1 is an opportunity for a birds-eye view of the turns and to reflect upon their interplay. Though the table suggests these movements have been chronological and concatenated, the dynamic relations between turns and their lifecycles are more complex. Sometimes, in a maternal manner, one turn births another. In this way, the cognitive turn established an interior orientation to information phenomena that spawned the affective turn. However, on occasion, turns originate in a conflicting spirit. For instance, the neo-documentary and the socio-cognitive turns were, in part, objections to the cognitive turn that sought to redirect analytical attention to an opposite, exterior polarity. Metaphorically speaking, turns can be seen as loving, supportive parents or competitive, squabbling siblings.

It is relatively easy for an aware reader to pinpoint the emergence of turns in the literature, since they arrive with rhetorical fanfare. It is more difficult to ascertain and explain their demise. (Bibliometric studies of word occurrences might help to show the slow death of turns.) Some turns, such as the cognitive and socio-cognitive, have met widespread acceptance and seem to have dissolved into the existing paradigm of library and information science research. Differently, the affective, neo-documentary and social constructionist turns may have plateaued yet remain productive, specialized research communities.

Table 1 displays too small a sample of turns to become a classification. Nevertheless, from this perspective different types of turns can be recognized. The cognitive, social-constructionist and embodied turns are theoretical campaigns that redefine the nature of information research. To boot, the social-constructionist turn also has a strong methodological element, given its commitment to discourse analysis. Other turns are largely substantive shifts into novel topical frontiers. The neo-documentary and everyday life turn identify and target new material and cultural domains and entail less theoretical and methodological upset.

Turns aside, the history of ideas in library and information science can also be told through technology. Traditionally, our field follows the ever-changing means of information access. Since Dervin and Nilan’s call-to-action (1986), we have focused upon: optical discs, CDROMS, networks, electronic document delivery, OPACS, the Internet, the World Wide Web, and digital libraries to name just a few innovations. When this paper was presented at the 10th Conceptions of Library and Information Science conference, audience members asked: Are big data and artificial intelligence turns? It is beyond the scope of this study to reconcile all conceptual, social, and technological trajectories in library and information science—but that is a worthy endeavor to consider for the 11th conference in 2020.

Conclusion

The turns described in this paper may be seen in a positive or negative light. On the positive side, turns are intellectual adrenaline or yeast, for they cause uplift and excitement and re-cast conventional research topics and designs. Without them, academic fields may feel sleepy, dusty, or stuck. Beneficially, turns fortify the social construction of knowledge by spawning theoretical and methodological bedfellows within and across disciplines. Since they often are motivated by personal experiences, turns bring personalities into view and make our literatures and conference sessions more colourful. To good ends, turns rattle and stretch a paradigm and capture the imagination of students.

On the negative side, the binary thinking, rhetoric, and grand-standing of turners may destabilize, alienate, and inflame colleagues. Turns seem to induce historical amnesia and naivete, for most are framed as breakthroughs despite abundant precedents. Detrimentally, turns may be disruptive to the systematic and economical production of knowledge, when unfinished business is be left behind prematurely in favor of fresh and exiting topics (Hartel, 2018).

Going forward, what turns might animate library and information science next? Perhaps an animal turn, that explores information phenomena between humans and animals, as well as within animal species? Or maybe a family turn, which recognizes the family as the ultimate information resource and system? Rather than ‘Turn, Turn, Turn,’ as the folk song goes, the Conceptions of Library and Information Science conference is the setting for library and information science to Re-turn (to our roots), Turn (to new ideas), and De-turn (replace fragmentation with unity).

Acknowledgements

Special thanks are extended to Francisco Valdez Arzate for his support while writing this paper; Jonathan Furner for seeding my interest in the intellectual history of library and information science; Marcia Bates for encouraging everyone to transcend turns; and Sarah Wilkinson for her excellent editorial hand in the manuscript.

About the author

Jenna Hartel is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Hartel conducts research in three areas: information phenomena in everyday life and leisure settings; ethnographic, creative, and visual methodologies; and the history and theory of library and information science. She can be reached at jenna.hartel@utoronto.ca

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