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The future of information science
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- By Maja Žumer, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
- David Bawden, Lyn Robinson
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- Book:
- Introduction to Information Science
- Published by:
- Facet
- Published online:
- 09 June 2018
- Print publication:
- 31 July 2012, pp xxiv-xxvi
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
The future is always beginning now
Mark StrandInformation is at the centre of our society. It is what we often talk about, it appears frequently in the media, it is often labelled as our most important asset. Even our time is, taking into account the importance of information, labelled the ‘information age’. We feel threatened by information overload, some may even suffer from information anxiety. On the other hand we cannot survive without it; we need information every moment of our lives.
And yet information science, the science having information at its focus, is experiencing an identity crisis. This is not new. For more than half a century information scientists have had to explain, over and over again, what their discipline was, and repeat that they were neither computer scientists nor librarians, while closely cooperating with them – and others. Could the reason be the interdisciplinary nature of the field? So outsiders notice the methods and theories taken from psychology, sociology, statistics, philosophy, etc., and do not see the added value of information science, particularly the focus on the object of the research: information.
Or is it because ‘information’ itself is so vaguely and variously defined? Or have information scientists never had good public relations skills, so that they could communicate the message and become more visible? Part of the problem, at least in some environments, may also be attributed to the often used phrase ‘library and information science’ (LIS). While possibly accepted by librarians, the phrase does not do justice to information scientists, limiting them to the context of libraries only.
While all this may seem a less important issue – information science has, after all, survived and flourished – the lack of understanding of information science is the highest hurdle for the implementation of its research results in practice. As the result, we encounter websites which are completely unintuitive, information systems aimed at the general public for which one needs specific training (e.g. library catalogues), unattractive interfaces, confusing subject arrangements, and so on. Let us take library catalogues as an example.
Some Advances in Liquid Crystal Elastomers: From Crosslinks Affected Ordering to Carbon Nanoparticles Enabled Actuation
- Slobodan Zumer, Martin Chambers, George Cordoyiannis, Heino Finkelmann, Zdravko Kutnjak, Andrija Lebar, Maja Remskar, Bostjan Zalar
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- Journal:
- MRS Online Proceedings Library Archive / Volume 1005 / 2007
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 15 March 2011, 1005-Q04-06
- Print publication:
- 2007
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- Article
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Liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) exhibit a combination of elasticity and mesogenic ordering, yielding large thermally stimulated changes in shape. These LCE systems although well characterised, still yield open questions in the nature of how the crosslinking affects the LCE phase transition. Therefore calorimetry and deuteron-nuclear magnetic resonance were used to study the isotropic-nematic phase transition of uniformly ordered LCE. We observed that the density of crosslinkers strongly affects the nematic-isotropic phase transition. The observed spread critical transitions are explained with a dispersion of local mechanical fields that yields a weakly disordered orientational state composed of regions that exhibit temperature profiles of the nematic order parameter ranging from first order to supercritical. On increasing crosslinking density, the predominantly first order thermodynamic response transforms into a predominantly supercritical one.
Additionally, to illustrate the response of these actuating systems, it was demonstrated that a LCE can be electrically heated. The insulating LCE network was reprocessed using conducting nanoparticles dispersed in a solvent with high LCE swelling capability. This results in a low electrical resistivity surface layer of LCE network with a high concentration of conducting nanoparticles. The reprocessing allows the effective resistivity of a LCE film to be reduced from highly insulating values to values useable for electrical actuation. This layer in addition withstands large changes in geometrical shape both in contraction and expansion. Utilizing a resistive “Joule” heating effect, the reprocessed system exhibits an indirect electromechanical effect characterised by a 150% length change that can be cycled for more than 10, 000 times.