Hi. This website presents my dissertation work,
an exploration of the emerging information environment of the collaboratory,
or laboratory without walls. This study is intended to support expansive
research, so instead of using one tool to dig one deep hole, it uses many tools to dig
several shallower holes to map the new terrain.
While this study is about the collaboratory,
it is also about the way we make knowledge. Its primary pupose to to provide a pimer
about the collaboratory; its underlying purpose is to lay the foundation for
continued work on the emerging "intertwining model" of knowledge construction,
or how we create knowledge in the objective, subjective, and intersubjective, and
specifically how me might create it differently as they merge in cyber-facilitated
simultaniety. It also plants the seeds for an experimental interdisciplinary
classification scheme based on the taxonomies developed in Phase One.
The dissertation was submitted in tradititonal paper
format as required, to be forever bound and shelved in the stacks of the library, frozen
in time and forever unlinked to its future. It is available here in that traditional
(paper) format as a .pdf document from the column of options to the left, via the .pdf Document hyperlink. The website also presents
the hypertext version, as clickable chapters, and continues the journey...
A dissertation is the "final" assignment for
the "terminal" degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and is intended not only to make
an original contribution to the body of knowledge, but to provide the student an
opportunity to exercise the research and inquiry skills learned during doctoral coursework
while still under the careful scrutiny and guidance of those who have completed the
task. The dissertation is the final requirement before being granted peer consent to
join in the practice of the philosophy of the discipline of study.
I successfully defended this dissertation to my
dissertation committee on 9/16/99, and that day "became" Dr. joanne twining, or
joanne twining, Ph.D., Doctor of Philosophy of Library and Information Studies.
I chose library information studies as my discipline
because it is an interdiscipline, and I thought it would be the hardest subject to
master since it's about everything and anything, and specifically about how people come to
know. I was right.
I chose the collaboratory as
the topic for my dissertation for several reasons. Primary among them is that it is
an elegant word that was delivered to me by the goddess of electronic nuggets, and I
always listen to her. The word collaboratory slips off the
tongue and sounds as if someone just made it up. Most people chuckle the first time
they hear it, convinced it's some sort of cyberfad. It isn't. It's big
science. Very big. And someone indeed just made up the word, and by doing so,
I'm convinced, changed forever the way scence will be done.
But when the goddess of electronic nuggests
delivered me the word and I went to the library find out more about it, I didn't find what
I was looking for.
So I had to write it myself.
Now, when someone goes looking for information about
the collaboratory, and when scientists have to learn about
how to conduct virtual, shared science, and educators have to start teaching it, and
librarians have to start supporting that work, they can all turn to this document for
understanding. In that sense, it is an original contribution to the body of
knowledge.
But a dissertation is more than that.
It's about the process as much as the product.
I approached the task intending to find the limits
of my ability to know things, and was fully prepared and intended to come to the edge of
that ability so I never had to wonder where it was again.
I didn't find it.
What I found was a beginning.
I hope you enjoy the story of my journey of
discovery about the collaboratory and will look closely between the words at the process
of my thinking and can catch a glimpse of the "intertwining model."
I hope you'll drop me a line to let me know what you
think, or better yet, leave a mesage in the Guest Book and let's
start building knowledge together.
joanne twining, M.L.S., Ph.D.
twining@intertwining.org
Dissertation Frontmatter ->
Abstract ->
