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The purpose is to offer a discussion of how we can conceive of the organization of knowledge in digital culture and its changing nature. The article proposes to view of it as both a decentered (communicative) and centered (analytical gaze).

This study involves comparative analysis and discussion.

The analysis and discussion argue for the two positions of the organization of knowledge and point to how and what we can understand about features of digital culture’s collection practices.

The originality of this article is the conceptualization of the organization of knowledge as both a decentered and centered practice in digital culture, from which is developed a particular knowledge organization perspective on social reality.

The purpose is to map and discuss two schools of thought in knowledge organization research. The objective of this mapping is to examine the conceptual views and the derived questions and concerns voiced in these two schools and whether they fit with concerns in contemporary digital culture.

The approach is a comparative analysis and discussion.

The comparative analysis and discussion point out the different sets of questions the two schools are concerned with distinct epistemological and ontological implications.

The originality of this article is the naming, mapping and discussion of two schools of research in knowledge with a view to how they fit with problems of ordering, archiving and searching in digital culture.

The purpose of this article is to develop a contemporary understanding of genre as digital social action. Particular emphasis will be on archiving, tagging, and searching as social actions afforded by digital media as a function of their materiality.

The approach is critical analysis and discussion.

It is shown through an examination and a concrete example of how the genre is understood as digital social action, how the materiality of digital media affords particular communicative actions.

The article contributes with an understanding of the genre as digital social action consisting of two communicating parts: users’ actions and materiality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the aptness of “information literacy”, conceptualized as a socially contextualized phenomenon, for analyses of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

The paper presents a conceptual analysis. Two influential representatives of the social turn in the information literacy literature are taken as starting points: Annemaree Lloyd’s conceptualization of “information literacy practice”, and Jack Andersen’s conceptualization of information literacy as “genre knowledge”. Their positioning of information literacy as a socially contextualized phenomenon – by use of practice theories and rhetorical genre theory, respectively, – is analysed against an illustrative example of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

Conceptualizations by Lloyd and Andersen explain information literacy as socially contextualized in terms of stable norms and understandings shared in social communities. Their concepts have the potential of explaining changes and innovations in social practices including scholarly communication. If we combine genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts – and accentuate the open-endedness of social practices and of genres – we can enhance the understanding of information literacy in settings of interdisciplinary scholarly communication where the actors involved lack shared conventions and assumptions.

The paper suggests that the fluid features of social contexts should be accounted for in the information literacy literature. By combining genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts in a novel way it offers such an account. It provides a useful framework for understanding the phenomenon of information literacy in interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

The purpose of the chapter is to argue for a twofold understanding of knowledge organization: the organization of knowledge as a form of communicative action in digital culture and the organization of knowledge as an analytical means to address features of digital culture.

The approach taken is an interpretative text-based form of argumentation.

The chapter suggests that by putting forward such a twofold understanding of knowledge organization, new directions are given as to how to situate and understand the activity and practice of the organization of knowledge in digital culture.

By offering the twofold understanding of the organization of knowledge, a tool of reflection is provided when users and the public at large try to make sense of, for example, data, archives, search engines, or algorithms.

The originality of the chapter is its demonstration of how to conceive of knowledge organization as a form of communicative action and as an analytical means for understanding issues in digital culture.

This chapter offers a re-description of knowledge organization in light of genre and activity theory. Knowledge organization needs a new description in order to account for those activities and practices constituting and causing concrete knowledge organization activity. Genre and activity theory is put forward as a framework for situating such a re-description.

By means of genre and activity theory, the chapters argues that understanding the genre and activity systems, in which every form of knowledge organization is embedded, makes us capable of seeing how knowledge organization, as a genre, both can be a tool and an object in genred human activities.

In contrast to much research into knowledge organization, this chapter does not emphasize techniques, standards, or rules to be the sole object of study. Instead, an emphasis is put on the genre and activity systems informing and shaping concrete forms of knowledge organization activity. With this, we are able to understand how knowledge organization activity also contributes to construct genre and activity systems and not only aid them.

To provide a small overview of genre theory and its associated concepts and to show how genre theory has had its antecedents in certain parts of the social sciences and not in the humanities.

The chapter argues that the explanatory force of genre theory may be explained with its emphasis on everyday genres, de facto genres.

By providing an overview of genre theory, the chapter demonstrates the wealth and richness of forms of explanations in genre theory.

In this article an epistemological interpretation of the role of subject literature in scholarly communication shall be proposed. Such an interpretation will focus on the epistemological dimension of communicating knowledge through literature and how this is achieved through discursive and rhetorical means. It will be argued that library and information science (LIS) theory on scholarly communication can be supplemented and strengthened by this interpretation. By establishing a social epistemology of subject literature the article contributes with a sketch of a coherent theory of scholarly literature explaining the epistemological and communicative division of labor between the various types of subject literature. Such a theory is in line with the current revival of social epistemology in LIS. The article is structured into three main sections. The first section will outline an epistemological position that pays particular attention to knowledge acquired through social interaction in general, and through interaction with written texts in particular. The works of the later Wittgenstein and Ludwik Fleck will be used as the theoretical frameworks. Having established this epistemological framework, the second section will outline what is considered to be the main types of subject literature, with emphasis on their discursive and rhetorical functions in scholarly communication. The third section will synthesize the two other sections into a sketch of a theory that will be labeled the social epistemology of subject literature and point to some implications for LIS research of this theory.