Internet review

Citation

Crowston, K. (2003), "Internet review", Information Technology & People, Vol. 16 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2003.16116dag.001

Internet review

This issue of IT&P includes papers with the usual eclectic mix of topics. In this column, I will discuss Internet resources relevant to three of them.

First, Shoib and Jones’s paper, “Focusing on the invisible: the representation of information systems in Egypt”, discusses the representation of IS in the IS research literature on Egypt. The state of IS in Egypt was touched on briefly before in this column in the special issue on “Information technology in the Middle East”, IT&P 16(1); the column is available online at http://crowston.syr.edu/itp/v16n1.php. Those interested in learning more may find these additional sites helpful:

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  The Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology offers a portal for the CIT industry in Egypt (http://www.citegypt.com/), with the mission “to promote the Egyptian CIT sector, to create a meeting point for the CIT community in Egypt and to give full and complete information about CIT Industry in Egypt”.

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  A portal calling itself “The voice of IT in Egypt” (http://www.itmisr.com/) has the aim “to promote IT awareness in this region”.

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  The home page of Sherif Kamel, Professor of Management Information Systems, Management Department, School of Business, Economics and Communication, The American University in Cairo, offers a number of links (http://www.aucegypt.edu/sherifkamel/). These resources generally reflect the perspective identified by Shoib and Jones, especially in their view of the role of information technology as an agent of development. It is also noteworthy that none use the.eg domain.

Two other articles focus on social aspects of information technology use. Kling’s “Critical Professional Education about Information and Communications Technologies and Social Life” emphasizes the value of a social informatics approach in educating IT professionals, while Eschenfelder’s “The Customer is Always Right, but Whose Customer is More Important? Conflict and Web Site Classification Schemes” applies a social shaping of technology approach to understanding conflicts in the design of corporate web sites.

Kling lists as likely homes for social informatics research and teaching a number of information schools, including the following:

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  Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/).

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  Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Computing (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/).

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  Indiana University, School of Library and Information Science (http://www.slis.indiana.edu/), home to the Centre for Social Informatics (http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI/). Indiana also has the School of Informatics (http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/).

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  Pennsylvania State University, School of Information Science and Technology (http://ist.psu.edu/index.cfm).

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  Rutgers University, School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/).

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  Syracuse University, School of Information Studies (http://www.ist.syr.edu/).

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  University of California at Berkeley, School of Information Management and Systems (http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/).

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  University of California at Los Angeles, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Department of Information Studies (http://is.gseis.ucla.edu/).

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  University of Illinois, Graduate School of Library and Information Science (http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/).

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  University of Michigan, School of Information (http://si.umich.edu/).

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  University of Washington, The Information School (http://www.ischool.washington.edu/).

Groups outside the US include the Social Informatics Group at the Napier University School of Computing in the United Kingdom (http://www.esis.napier.ac.uk/) whose site includes an Informatics Gateway (http://www.esis.napier.ac.uk/gateway/gateway.html). Kyoto University in Japan has a Department of Social Informatics within the Graduate School of Informatics (http://www.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp/English/), but unfortunately the Department page is in Japanese only.

The Research Centre for Social Sciences of the Social Science Faculty at the University of Edinburgh (http://www.rcss.ed.ac.uk/technology/) has a specific focus on the social shaping of technology, “particularly in relation to Information and Communications Technologies”. Their site includes an article entitled “What is the social shaping of technology?” by Robin Williams and David Edge (http://www.rcss.ed.ac.uk/technology/SSTRP.html).

Sadly, with the recent death of Rob Kling (http://www.slis.indiana.edu/faculty/kling/) the growing field of Social Informatics lost one of its most vocal proponents. A memoriam to Rob Kling by Roberta Lamb, one of his students, was recently published in The Information Society, the journal that Rob edited (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/tf/TIS_KlingIntro.pdf). IT&P will publish a Festschrift for Rob Kling; the call can be found at http://www.itandpeople.org/robklingspecialissue.htm

As usual, you can avoid having to retype the URLs in this article by starting from the online version at http://crowston.syr.edu/itp/.

Kevin Crowston