Interdisciplinarity :
The Meme for The Space Between the Books

A Qualitative Probe of Cyberspace Toward Understanding The Knowledge-Building Imperative of Librarianship

by joanne twining williams

Generating Theory: THE NEED TO KNOW

The research community seeks a new way to know, a sort of broad, inclusive, holistic understanding memed ¹ from Julie Thompson Klein's synthetic Interdisciplinarity. (1990, 195) Prefix debate aside, librarianship has assumed interdisciplinarity is a logical way of knowing that is proper to the domain of information ² and therefore of general and common interest to the disciplines. While the disciplines may turn to librarianship for interdisciplinary guidance, librarianship must turn to information for clues to its understanding. This analysis seeks understanding ⁴ by probing ⁵ a dataset ⁶ mined ⁷ from the Internet newsgroups. The dataset is analyzed to reveal memotypical ⁸ aspects of the concept "interdisciplinarity" by looking at its contextual use, and seeks to determine if online use agrees with Klein's definition. It is assumed understanding will be relevant to discovery ⁹ and pertinent to the development of the concept of metalibrarianship. ¹⁰

This paper is part of an emerging research agenda probing ¹³ cyberspace ¹⁴ for opportunities ¹⁵ to informate ¹⁶ indicators of the interdisciplinary knowledge-building imperative of metalibrarianship. ¹⁷

Assumption and Approach

It is assumed there need not be a question for qualitative research to begin. Philosophically, this approach accepts that "...the epistemological nature of relations (¹⁸) describes the processes of balancing the empirical tendencies of reducing ideas to data, with the metaphysical claims of their independent existence." (Nitecki, 1993, 2.1.5.a)

THE DATASET

The dataset ¹⁹ was extracted February 1, 1997 from Internet ²⁰ Usenet ²¹ newsgroups ²² archived by Dejanews ²³ by searching the message subject field using the truncated search string interdisciplin* The dataset was verified and duplicated by extraction from the AltaVista Usenet ²⁴ newsgroup database February 5, 1997.

METHODOLOGY

This paper chronicles ²⁵ the construction, deconstruction, and qualitative analysis of the dataset. Analysis attempts to integrate interdisciplinary perspective while applying useful and appropriate aspects of the full methodological palette. It employs the basic data organizational tools of categorization and classification to reduce for sense-making (coding, taxonomic construction, domain analysis, symbolic representation, etc), but relys predominantly on the liberal exercise of the original concept of grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, Glaser 1992), which offers the only opportunity for the question (if there is one) to emerge unasked. We simultaneously look to two key aspect of ethnographic analysis (Spradley 1990) by assuming what people say (or write, or post, in this case) are artifacts representing what they know, and define this symbol-meaning combination as the representational meme.

THE CONCEPTS

What was the question? Interdisciplinarity Understood

Interdisciplinarity is a way of knowing grounded in general systems theory (von Bertalanffy 1968) which gives us that all things are intertwined. Interdisciplinarity has a "why not?" rather than the traditional "so what?" research imperative. Interdisciplinarity is a journey, not a destination; it is a seeking rather than an arriving. It is more concerned with how, and whether to ask, rather than what to ask. These are its flaws as a traditional methodological exercise (Broido 1979). As a search, the value of interdisciplinarity is the process, so caution for assumptions is given, and tolerance begged as argument is made for interdisciplinarity as information-seeking behavior, and the meme is offered as its representational result.

The need to know and librarianship

Philosophical Background and Practical Application

The object of interdisciplinarity is to know what we don't know we don't know, or as one wise page put it , to know "...the interval between the books..." ²⁶ The subject of interdisciplinarity is information, the domain of librarianship, which counts among its divisions all, that is known, as well as the space between. Librarianship takes upon itself the organization of knowledge for general understanding. Interdisciplinarity is, in essence, librarianship's practice. Progressively speaking, "omni"disciplinarity may be defined as the knowing in all ways, not just the between (inter), or within (intra), and is therefore logical to Metalibrarianship's continuum, and to the advancement of the practice of librarianship and its knowledge-building imperative. Analysis of the dataset for understanding of the memic meaning of the concept of interdisciplinarity may or may not provoke the question imperative of qualitative research, but will serve to advance the practice of information if it reveals what is in the mind of the user, an understanding critical to the art of librarianship.

What interdisciplinarity is not

Interdisciplinarity ²⁷ is frequently misunderstood as a sort of "hyper"nated ²⁸ patchwork of disciplines, such as biotechnology, agrisociology or choreophysics. Once named, however, these new fields become disciplines or subdisciplines themselves (Klein 1990), and as such gain the focus, methodological limits and dominion (Kuhn 1970) against which interdisciplinarity strives. Interdisciplinarity is also often mischaracterized as combining disciplinary attributes for specific application. This deliberate tool-building activity is an effective problem-solving or project-specific tactic, and as such has undoubtedly contributed to the memic mutation of of the concept, but, because of inherent divisiveness, is also not interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinarity is also not the systematic splitting of disciplines characterizing scientific revolution. In fact, it may be just the opposite.

Interdisciplinarity as Informating

True interdisciplinarity may not be definable except as itself. ²⁹ For the purpose of this research, interdisciplinarity is considered an information-seeking behavior: a way of becoming informed, yet a mindset as much as toolset. Just as easily, interdisciplinarity may be viewed as a related information use behavior, but exploration of that aspect is left for another time. Interdisciplinarity, in its broadest sense, is a way of coming to know without constraint; of multiple simultaneous processing, and connection-making, of seeing the whole, from without the parts. It is a way to arrive at the boundaries of knowledge, from outside those boundaries: it is an approach; an intellectual activity which takes place outside the restraints of disciplinary methods.. It is informating in the space between the books.

As a way of knowing, interdisciplinarity is powered by information, the content, channel and context of which determines the extent of its reach. In other words, what we know is determined by the data to which we are exposed, and by our process of informating. Interdisciplinarity requires a fundamental change in approach (Bates 1996) at the basic level of the information process ³⁰ if we are to counter disciplinary constraint and move toward unity of knowledge, or arrive at ways of knowing the unknown.

Fig 1 - Interdisciplinarity, Multidisciplinarity, Transdisciplinarity - Concepts Compared as Space

Disciplinarity as division

Disciplinary processes are the accepted and perpetually-modified methods by which a field of study leads itself down is won path (double palindrome and anagrams intended.) A disciplined process determines what will be known by controlling how it will be known. In other words, our questions and our methods for answering them determine our answers. Our most pressing research problems, however, are those for which we do not yet know the question. Those problems which defy disciplinary methods and means, and which the disciplines have failed to adequately ask, or answer, are grounded in a state of "unknowing" which has given rise to interdisciplinarity.

The nature of focused, disciplinary scientific research, and its processes, coupled with the exponential growth of available information, have served to narrow, arguably choke, the information spectrum to which many researchers may expect to be exposed. Interdisciplinarity is a move toward widening this information spectrum. It is no longer possible by traditional means to know all that may be known about one thing, much less a little about everything. Barring paradigm in human processing capacity, interdisciplinarity offers a turn from knowing more (quantity) to knowing differently (quality).

Disciplinary Constraints of Qualitative Methodologies

Disciplinarity produces experts who know much about a specific aspect, unit or topic (Lofland and Lofland 1995). The process of extracting truths from observation (Spradley 1980), and the explicitness of social scientific rules and views (Miles and Huberman 1994) give no mind to the wider implications of the narrowed knowledge such focus naturally produces. Even the social science's most unrestrained methodology, grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss 1967), has fallen to the disciplinary imperative to narrow, focus and limit (Stauss & Corbin 1990), both in its course to discovery and in its dissemination, by placing the disciplinary question at the determining center of the conditional matrix (163).

Social science as anti-interdisciplinarity

The object of interdisciplinarity is to widen focus, rather than narrow it, as is the social scientific research imperative. Interdisciplinarity probes the boundaries of knowledge from without rather than raising specific questions from within. This paradigmatic shift threatens the very assumptions of disciplinary research. Social scientific research methodologies call for a focus (i.e., the question) first as a criteria for all research. Its practitioners often deny other origins, such as wonder, curiosity, intuition, or the need to know, even dismissing as semantic this fundamentally interdisciplinary argument. Like scientists in all disciplines, social scientists are restrained to follow rigid criteria, or steps (no matter how liberally rigorous and despite begging creativity). The process moves in specific directions, for specific purposes, using restricted tools. The immediate focus, and slow, systematic broadening from question to answer is achieved by the infusion of select, categorized data. So informated, data should give the answer sought: that which is implicit in the question, even if also the occasionally astonishing revelation. This process tells us much about how scientists have come to know, and given the challenge of creative questioning, even hints at what may be conceived, but exploration within these bounds is nevertheless constrained by the question. In essence, disciplinary research is a directive process of narrowing to identify the expected, and broadening to substantiate. It is the systematic exploration of the known.

Interdisciplinarity, however, is fueled by an imperative that there is much unknown in the uncharted spaces between the disciplines, and that knowing all ways (omnidisciplinarity) may lead to the ultimate: wisdom. Simplistically, this is the philosophy of librarianship, the reality of the Metalibrarianship model, and the foundation on which this probe relies.

MEMETICS

Memetics has declared itself a "new" interdisciplinary science of cultural evolution in which the transmissive element is information." ³¹ Memes have been the subject of sociological, mathematical, philosophical, technological, psychological, physical and teleological scrutiny. The concept of the meme is spreading through the literature at an epidemic rate. Popularly spawned by, but not original to Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins' (1975, 1986) "The Selfish Gene" and perpetuated in his (1991) essay "Viruses of the Mind," ³² and again by Brodie (1996) in a book with the same (if "pinched") title, popular memetics draws heavily on biological/virological metaphors (host, infection, immune reaction, etc.) and the analogy between the spread of ideas and the spread of disease for its description. As such, meme has been defined variously; as a unit of imitation, as

...nothing more than a pattern of information, one that happens to have evolved a form which induces people to repeat that pattern....selection favors the memes which are easiest to understand, to remember, and to communicate to others...so, in theory at least, the ability to understand and communicate complex memes is a survival trait, and natural selection should favor those who aren't too conservative to understand new memes...people try to infect each other with those memes which they find most appealing, regardless of the meme's objective value or truth, ³³

or, more simply as "...a cognitive-behavioral pattern that can be transmitted from one individual to another through communication." ³⁴

The significance of the meme, so defined as an qualitative concept, also contains quantitative indicators, proof of their interdiscipliarity. Memes are

...basic building block of our minds and culture, the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of biological life...(is) in extending Darwinian evolution to culture. There are several exciting conclusions from doing that, one of which is the ability to predict that ideas will spread not because they are "good ideas", but because they contain "good memes" such as danger, food and sex that push our evolutionary buttons and force us to pay attention to them.³⁵

In his online book, "Cultural Selection," ³⁶ (1996) Agner Fog explores the debate of the concept of memetics as both a theoretical science and a soft science, claiming that it so far has "not developed into a rigorous science...with no exact definitions or strict formalism" but that it is the "...blending and ever changing clusters of information." Such definition supports our concept of interdisciplinarity as an information-seeking behavior, and substantiates the lure of the meme as an opportunity for understanding. Further support for our concept is offered by the official opening of a new branch of knowledge in the Library of Congress catalog system ("Contagion [Social Psychology]") with the publication of Aaron Lynch's (1996) "Thought Contagion," which "examines a powerful class of beliefs, called memes, that 'program' for their own re-transmission." ³⁷

"Thought Contagion" is supported by an online technical paper, "Units and Events of Replication" ³⁸ which recasts the core concepts of the popular work for scientists by providing some "philosophy of science behind memetics theory while lending a stronger platform for mathematical and empirical investigations." The paper relies not on biological metaphor, or concrete mechanisms of information storage, but on memory abstractions and the concept of "sameness" (having at least one quality in common) as the basis for the "self-replicating or -propagating idea" that is core to Memetic Evolutionary Theory. The paper defines meme as

A memory item, or portion of an organism's neurally-stored information, identified using the abstraction system of the observer, whose instantiation depends critically on causation by prior instantiation of the same memory item in one or more other organisms' nervous systems. ("Sameness" of memory items is determined with respect to the above-mentioned abstraction system of the observer.)

Lynch represents Memetic Evolutionary Theory symbolically as:

A = host of meme A

B = host of meme B

A*B = meme A and meme B instantiated in the same host (logically extended to A*B*C*D...representing a system of memes within a single host)

~A = non-host of meme A

Relationally, this symbolic representation is extended to the evolution or replication of memes by the formula: A + ~A --> 2A which is read "host of A together with non-host of A yields two hosts of A" in which the two hosts on the left of the arrow are the same two people as on the right of the arrow, one of whom is converted from non-host to host status. Other evolutionary events include:

A --> ~A (host of A drops out)

~A --> A (non-host independently forms host A)

A --> 0A (host of A dies)

2A --> 2A + ~A (two hosts of A have a baby non-host of A)

Lynch's symbolic representation of memetic propagation is carried to further, more complicated multi-stage and multi-player synergistic diagrams and combinations, and includes propagation of both host and non-host infections, singularly and in combination, which can lead to heterogenic or "other-forming" memes, homogenetic or "same-forming" memes, and homoderivitive (independent thinking) memes. Lynch's paper also develops a "mathematics" of memetics for quantitative analysis, but for the qualitative purpose of this paper, and in the spirit of interdisciplinarity, the simple initial formula and principles are appropriated and adapted.

PRESCRIPTION FOR UNDERSTANDING

Informating the free ³⁹ digital data without the limits of discipline, methodology, question, time, and place, is prescribed as the best opportunity to gain an understanding of the memetic meaning of interdisciplinarity.. Once gained, it is assumed this understanding will serve to assist librarianship's penetration of the artificial boundaries of territorial disciplinarity (Kuhn 1970) and shed light on what we have come to express by the common use and expectations of the concept.

"Cyber-" as Social Place: The Dataset Justified

Interdisciplinary research may be characterized as interstudy of the whole information, or Ideometry, ⁴⁰ the putting together and restructuring of the encyclopedic knowledge now made possible by information technologies. Metaphorically actualized as the library, and more specifically, as the "space between the books" interdisciplinarity provides the greatest potential for the broader understanding sought among the 3000 or more disciplines. As a space between the books, cyberspace can be mined for useful and telling information, this despite the admonition that "face-to-face" interaction is the only way to "get into the mind" of the research subject. (Lofland & Lofland 1995). Coyne (1996) substantiates:

Cyberspace is an environment of pure information and hence has access to reality--to reproduce, to manipulate, and to transcend...the essence of face-to-face encounters between people is information exchange: 'To include mediated encounters in the study of situations, we need to abandon the notion that social situations are only encounters that occur face-to-face in set times and places. We need to look at the larger, more inclusive notion of 'patterns of access to information' ⁴¹

PRELIMINARY DATA ANALYSIS

The construction

The dataset, Usenet Newsgroup postings, determined its own specific domain (Lofland & Lofland) as a kind of activity, or information exchange, on the Internet. News is distinct from email, listserv, the world wide web and other Internet functions because of its direct, interactive, many-to-many communication mode, and distinct again from the Internet's other many-to-many venue, chat, because it is archived and serves as a permanent, searchable record. The Newsgroup database was searched using the truncated string "interdisciplin*" in the message subject field. Ending truncation facilitated retrival of the root concept; the databases do not allow beginning truncation, which would have allowed retrieval of related concepts, such as multidisciplin*, crossdisciplin*, etc. 1788 postings were retrieved.

Five data analysis techniques were employed to chunk, or deconstruct our retrieved dataset:

1. (Initial-, Descriptive-, Open-) Coding (Lofland & Lofland 1995, Miles & Huberman 1995, Straus & Corbin 1995, Glaser & Strauss 1967)

The digital dataset retrieved was initially delivered as an index of individual posting's represented by user-defined subject lines. This index was saved for archival purposes and printed for constant comparative analysis. The online search results were given a cursory scan and the corresponding print copy was marked for preliminary indicators of creativity, (color) curiosity (geometry) and tasking codes (symbol). Such codes represent initial inclinations of the researcher's perceived usefulness: color as a reminder to return for further probing and an indicator of pique; geometry (circles, underlines, and linking marks) as indicators of perceived connection between otherwise unstrung messages; and tasking codes (referential arrows, question marks, etc) as action reminders. This initial coding scan was set aside for subsequent exercise and analysis.

2. Selective Retrieval

The digital dataset was scanned again for provocation of sustained interest and likely value motivated by a yet-unarticulated sense of focus (the question yet unasked) achieved during the initial scan. Twenty six messages "spoke," and were read both online and printed, and set aside for subsequent analysis.

3. Indicative Aspects and Taxonomic Analysis (Spradley 1980)

The coded dataset index printout was scanned again for telling indicators, or aspects (Lofland & Lofland 1995) of the nature of the postings subject lines. From this scanning, a preliminary taxonomic (Spradley 1980) arrangement emerged:

Fig 2: Taxonomic Arrangement of Newsgroup Postings Subject Lines

4. Taxonomic Analysis (Spradley 1980) and Content Analysis

The 26 messages previously selected were separated into the taxonomically-identified domains and scanned for usefulness. Four postings could be assigned to the domain "opinions," which seemed to offer the best option for determining contextual implications of use of the word interdisciplin* as representative of memetic meaning.

5. Relational Sensemaking by Computer

the reconstruction

For ease of digestion, the retrieved dataset was randomly reduced by 90% from 1788 to 178 postings. From this reduced total, a representational number of messages proportional to the emergent domains in the 26 originally-selected postings, or 27 postings attributable to the domain "opinion," was set as a target extraction for content analysis.

The entire dataset was loaded into AskSam ⁴² Pro for subsequent full-text relational scanning and further sensemaking and to aid in the extraction of "opinion" postings as relational keywords or concepts emerged.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

In the whole of the reduced dataset, the word "interdisciplin* was used primarily as an adjective, with no accompanying qualification or definition. The adjective most frequently referred to conferences, research and/or courses of study, or employment situations, often with references to several or multiple disciplines elsewhere in the text. Rarely was interdisciplinarity used as a stand-alone concept of knowledge, or related elsewhere in the context, thus making it impossible to arrive at a meaningful conceptual understanding of its use as an adjective. Most of the targeted postings originated from the .edu domain, an indicator both of the predominant use of Usenet by the scholarly community, and of the concept's memetic reproduction within that community.

CONTENT ANALYSIS

Of the 178 documents randomly selected for cursory representation of the whole, and loaded into AskSam Pro for analysis, only one contained a reference to the concept of the meme. This document was a posting from a Canadian professor to the newsgroup sci.bio.evolution and was interspersed with remarks from the moderator. The two debate whether the concept of cultural evolution, or memetics, was appropriate for discussion within the group. The moderator's remark:

It's my impression that "memetics" suffers from a general lack of rigor by comparison, however, and tends to degenerate into pop sociology...

was countered by the professor:

...I consider myself a 'memeticist' and if you accuse me of lack of rigour I will whap you soundly with my p values and then poke you with the tips of my trees. ;>

The professor offered an overview of the development of memetics and a bibliography containing reference to Cavalli­Sforza, L. and M. Feldman (1978). "Toward a theory of cultural evolution," in Interdisciplinary Science Review 3: 99­107. This reference gives credence to our conceptual link for analytic purposes. The message perhaps best captures the essence of Klein's (1990) "Interdisciplinarity" as it does not contain the token adjective and it represents the intellectual crossing of disciplinary boundaries in action. This was also the only document of the 178 retrieved by a fuzzy ⁴³ search for keyword "opinion."

FOCUSED, INTERPRETIVE, AXIAL CODING

The documents retrieved as logical for the "opinions" group, and analyzed for memic meaning by relation revealed a notion of "between-ness" as outlined in our concept narrative. Words giving indication of the concept are displayed in bold in this analysis:

The second message was posted to the newsgroup rec.martial-arts from a Canadian educational domain. This post is a philosophical discussion of one person's quandary whether to switch from one martial art to another. In justifying the urge to switch, the poster makes reference to a gravitation toward interdisciplinary studies, and substantiates our notion that interdisciplinarity is a mindset as much as a toolset:

I've molded my whole life around the concept and precept of non-rigidification and flexibility...it is a proclamation of belief orientation, nothing less.

The third document was a posting to the newsgroup bionet.biology.computational from a commercial domain as part of a three-way discussion of employability in the field of bioinformatics. The discussion debates the specializing scientists vs. "interdisciplinary types." A computer programmer speaks of an experience with several senior industry figures who said they needed multidisciplinary bioinformaticians:

...they are the life blood of the company, [but] I asked whether they would actually hire someone who did not fall into a pre-defined employment box. Rather to their own embarrassment, they all said that no, their companies would not. They just didn't have the mechanisms for identifying someone who was good at an ill-defined subject (i.e. one that did not fit into the form on an HR person's desk), nor the mechanisms for evaluating, using and promoting (or firing) them once they had got them. So, while everyone talks about multidisciplinary work, the big companies cannot hire people who do it...this leaves academics to dabble, and a few biotech. companies big enough to afford good bioinformatics but small enough to be flexible. Not a great future, really.

A simultaneous post to the newsgroups sci.lang, sci.nonlinear, comp.speech, and sci.physics by a faculty member at an .edu domain responds to a string originating from military domain discussing the ethical aspects of changes suggested but not made in a reviewed paper. The string references a book that calculates about 350,000 mathematical theorems are published every year:

...so it looks like the sheer volume is going up everywhere. What we seem to need are more interdisciplinarians to make more links and perhaps produce more compressed versions of knowledge.

An undergraduate enrolled in a large western United States university and posting from the .edu domain to the newsgroup bionet.women-in-bio contemplates a switch of disciplines in graduate school and offers some concern about the future of formal interdisciplinary laboratory studies while sharing an impression that biology had

...diverged into specialized subfields that did not have as much communication with each other....my perspective of non-interacting sub-fields was influenced because there are three separate departments and the interdisciplinary program between them suffered from a lack of funding...what I would be looking for (is a situation with) P.I.'s conducting their own work as well as mentoring a small number of students, and a large system approach drawing together research in many fields.

A post to the newsgroup alt.architecture from the .com domain offers further clues about the concept of interdisciplinarity, both as between-ness and as a philosophical concept::

...the philosophy of connecting nature, art, green architecture and sustainability, as a lifestyle, as an interdisciplinary study, is my interest....getting a building built is not much of a problem...it is getting our society to change its mind about what is an appropriate expression for a sane future....

A simultaneous string of posts between the .edu domain and an Australian domain to the newsgroups sci.physics, sci.physics.relativity, sci.astro.alt.sci.physics.new-theories and others, points to the constructive, integrative imperative of interdisciplinarity:

I am sympathetic of your idea of promoting more interdisciplinary research. I do believe, in fact, that what science lacks the most and needs the most right now is what I would call "integrators of knowledge," people who, while not being experts in any specific field, have a broad view of the large scale landscape of the human intellectual enterprise.

...Definitely. there is a huge wealth of talented folk--all with a great deal of knowledge concerning their specialized fields. The increasing specialization of research leads to greater detail of available information and thus greater opportunity or potentiality for the perception of connectivity between (apparently different) fields of study - either neighboring in the present structure of disciplinary knowledge, or even remote.

...I think you are saying that - somewhere down the line - any progressive understandings to evolve from the now diverse fields of scientific research, will be most certainly related to some existing information structure which will permit a greater specification, and thus a greater potential for "universality" in the long run...due to the already existent interconnectedness of the interdisciplinic (sic) information structure.

....Yes. This interconnectedness is important, since it prescribes limits to possible changes. One cannot just come and say "I don't like this specific brick in the existing structure" precisely because it is a structure, not just a loose pile of bricks. So before you raise your hand to remove a brick, you've to consider all the other bricks which are connected to it somehow, and what modifications need to be done to the whole structure, so that it'll hold together.

A U.S. cognitive psychophysiology researcher from the .edu domain posting to the bionet.neuroscience newsgroup offers this view of interdisciplinary need:

...that's the reason why a truly interdepartmental program needs people who do everything and not a collection of people who can collectively do the same thing. What we need is true integration of various disciplines...not different specialists working together.

A posting to the newsgroup soc.motss from the .edu domain about organizational principles offers a problem encountered while moving an office and rearranging library materials, telling of the universal inseparability of interdisciplinarity:

The thing I've noticed is that it's a lot easier to shelve the older books -- it's as if books just make up their own grouping logic after a while. I mean, I have Aristotle and books on Aristotle: easy. But what do you do with, say, Derrida? I put him in (the badly defined) "philosophy" after Hesserl and before some secondary stuff like Bennington and Gasche, but miles away from de Man and the Yale guys, which feels snobby, but otherwise he'd've ended up as dismembered (he he) as Osiris. The newer stuff is so difficult to sort because it plugs into so many categories. I guess that's my greatest complaint about interdisciplinarity.

In the Usenet Newsgroup postings extracted for containing the character string interdisciplin*, most were adjectival references and not relatable to a secondary concept. As such, they were disregarded in this analysis, though they do point toward a casual, perhaps mutated, use of the meme as is reflected in the popular (nonacademic) use of interdisciplinarity as a problem- or solution-specific construction, or to the prefix-specific hybrid concepts (multi- cross- trans-, etc.) earlier described.

In the context-rich postings taxonomized to the "opinion" domain, however, use of the word finds easy relation to secondary concepts reflecting the "between-ness" and "connected-ness" characterized as our "space between the books." Such use shows a conceptual understanding that aligns with Klein's metaphoric definitions and proves true to her original meaning.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR LIBRARIANSHIP

The meme, as an expression of conceptual understanding, is a representation in a state of constant change, evolution and mutation. On one day it may mean one thing, on another, something else; one information seeker may use a meme to mean one thing, another, something else. This is a challenge to librarianship, as meaning, or commonness of understanding, is implicit in the nature of the meme. By reflection in a relational concept, contextual understanding of the intended meaning can be determined. Librarians have long understood that information requests are of three types: expressed (what the seeker SAYS is the need), visceral (what the seeker believes, but perhaps does not express as the need) and actual (what the seeker needs, but neither says nor understands to be the need). An understanding of memes serves all three types of need service. The meme, a commonly used but perhaps not specifically understood representation of an idea (as in this case, interdisciplinarity) presents a difficulty because of its constantly-mutating nature and often thoughtless use. By seeking reflective meaning and by identifying relational clues librarianship is better equipped to specifically satisfy the request of information-seekers who venture into the territory outside their disciplines. Those in librarianship charged with mediating between the information and the user must seek contextual clues to determine the appropriateness of venturing between disciplinarily-segregated collections. Those charged with arranging information for non-intermediary access may gain insight into the ways we can come to represent data, information, and knowledge to fill the "space between the books."

______________

Endnotes (Hyperlinks Verified 6/97)

1. "meme: (pron. 'meem') A contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passed on from mind to mind. Memes function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating through communication networks and face-to-face contact between people. The root of the word "memetics," a field of study which postulates that the meme is the basic unit of cultural evolution. Examples of memes include melodies, icons, fashion statements and phrases. " http://www.reach.com/matrix/ For an overview of memetic research see also alt.memics FAQ: Sources of Infection @ http://www.asds.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ofr/mimetics2.html

2. data<->information<->knowledge<->wisdom<->?

4. coming to know

5. seeking informational clues

6. a set of data: part of the information record

7.extracted for specific value and use

8. memotype - 1. The actual information-content of a meme, as distinct from its sociotype. http://pespmc1.veb.ac.be/MEMLEX.html

9. to gain knowledge through observation and study

10. This research is informed by J.Z. Nitecki (1993), _Metalibrarianship: A Model for Intellectual Foundation of Library Information Science_, a "...metaphysical speculation about the extralibrary characteristics of bibliographic aspects of information that extend beyond library and information science." http://venus.twu.edu/~g_11williams/Nitecki/Metalibrarianship

13. examine without expectation or constraint to draw inference and determine value (as grounded theory [Glasser & Strauss 1967]) by process of writing observations and perceptions for determined distribution as information. A full an proper medialogical analysis (McLuhan 1966) would include both the "medium" and the "message," and while such treatment would look more holistically at the information, it is beyond the assigned bounds of this paper and left for the future.

14. the "place" in which computers function (assuming Coyne's [1996] positive argument that cyber is "world, place, space, community"[14])

15. instances in which specific action is most likely to produce desired results.

16. verb. The process of information, specifically the coming to know though data exercise. Coming to know and understanding are two results of the information process.

17. (small "m") the realm which rules the world of information: where the spirit of the keeping takes place and the question of understanding is determined. For the scientific explication of the concept, (capital "M"), see Nitecki: http://venus.twu.edu/~g_11williams/Nitecki/Metalibrarianship

18. the relationship between all relevant concepts, their meaning, and the interpretation by the receiver of the message

19. The dataset was retrieved using advanced search strategy options on the fulltext of the entire Dejanews database, using the search string interdisciplin*. The * is a symbol for truncation, the shortening of a word to represent "...and any other symbols that immediately follow." Use of trailing truncation in this case allows extraction of the root concept without elimination by suffix:. interdisciplin* extracts interdisciplinarity, interdiscipline, interdisciplines, etc. Unfortunately, the database selected does not allow beginning truncation, so this research excludes relevant nuances in the concept, such as multidisciplin*, quasidisciplin*, transdisciplin*, crossdisciplin* etc., such being eliminated except for relational explanation. Results were displayed in full form to mask domain indicators, and threaded for ease of digestion. The probe extracted 1788 records in sets of 100 each.

20. to gain knowledge through observation

21. the extraglobal network of networked computers

22. part of the Internet. A distributed, online bulletin board which anyone with access and inclination (millions globally) may read or post messages to freely. Usenet has been characterized as the first many-to-many communication. any of 15,000 subject-specific areas of Usenet

23. http://www.dejanews.com A fully searchable relational database of Usenet newsgroup postings from March 1995 to present, containing over two gigabytes of data, and growing,

24. executed through http://www.search.com using identical search parameters

25. The information discipline, journalism, seeks to portray reality symbolically on a spatial, temporal continuum by capturing the regular information and distributing in a one-to-many information exchange

26. Foucault, Michel. 1977. Fantasia of the Library. Translated by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault. Edited by Donald F. Bouchard. Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press.

27. The word interdisciplinary ". . .was first used orally by the Columbia University psychologist Robert S. Woodworth on the evening of August 30, 1926, at one of the. . .meetings. . ." of the Social Science Research Council. ". . .There is no evidence of the word appearing in print until 1933. . .when the Council advertised its offer of fellowships in the American Journal of Sociology, using the word 'interdisciplinary' as an attraction. . . The new Oxford English Dictionary, however, still reports a 1937 appearance in a similar Council advertisement as the first use." (http://www.ssrc.org/decemitems4/html)

28. linked and interactive without hyphenation

29. Julie Klein (1990, 55) defines interdisciplinary metaphorically: by example, by motivation, by principles of interaction, and by terminological hierarchy.

30. as an information seeking behavior, at the data-to-information level; as an information use behavior, at the information-to-knowledge level.

31. there is no shortage of information about memes, including both academic, scholarly and popular works. For an overview of articles available online, see http://sepa.tudelft.nl/webstaf/hanss/mem.html

32. http://physserv1.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html

33. for a historical development of the concept, see Memes: Introduction, by Glenn Grant @ http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/MEMIN.HTML

34. Memics. by F. Heylighen @ http://pespmc1.vub.be/MEMES.html

35. Meme FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) @ http://www.brodietech.com/rbrodie/meme.htm#faq

36. http://announce.com/agner/cultsel/chap2.html#memetics"

37. reviews, related papers and an online version of Chapter 1 @ http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/thoughtcontagion.html

38. http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/mememath.html"

39. in this sense meaning data created wholly by the source, without researcher constraint such as approach, question, directives; also without limits of space and time.

40. see Luciano Floridi's 1995 UNESCO Philosophy Forum paper "The Future of Organized Knowledge" for an explication of the impact of digital technology in the interdisciplinary reorganization of information and development of the concept of Ideometry. http://www.unleyhs.schools.sa.edu.au/issues/floridi.html

41. Meyrowitz, Joshua. 1985. "No Sense of Place: The impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior" NY: Oxford University Press, 37. (Coyne 1996, 160).

42. A fulltext relational database software which preserves the interactive connection between the index retrieved and the messages represented.

References

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Brodio, Jonathan. Interdisciplinarity: Reflections on Methodology. In Kocklemans, Joseph J., Ed., 1979. Interdisciplinarity in Higher Education. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.

Brodie, Richard. 1996. Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme. Seattle: Integral Press. Available, in part @ http://www.briduetech.com/rbridue/vmintro.htm

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______________. 1991. Virus of the Mind. http://physserv1.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html

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Copyright 1997, 1998 joanne twining williams All rights Reserved. Comments? : twining@texoma.net Revised 12/97. -30-