Introduction

This chapter examines developments in systematic reviewing and what they mean for the search process. It introduces recent methods of synthesis, including mixed methods reviews and realist syntheses. It goes on to consider how innovative review types affect how we plan and execute search strategies. The chapter explores the value of other question formats and why you should choose a method appropriate to your review question. It starts by examining acknowledged limitations of the conventional systematic review model, both within health and multiple disciplines in which systematic reviews are gaining traction.

Challenging the conventional systematic review model

Since the mid-1990s, the conventional systematic review model, which assumes a closely focused question, a comprehensive search and a focus on synthesising ‘stronger’ rather than ‘weaker’ evidence, has proved remarkably flexible and resilient (Petticrew, 2015). The model has survived transfer to other emerging domains for systematic reviews, such as education, management and environmental science. However, this model faces renewed challenges as decision-makers seek to address ever more complex questions and to explore complex socially-mediated interventions, requiring diverse data and approaches to synthesis, and consequent changes to how studies are identified and selected.

Petticrew characterises the current era as moving from ‘What works’ to ‘What happens’ (Petticrew, 2015). Specifically, new forms of knowledge synthesis are required to explore people's perceptions of their situation, to identify underlying theories to explain how an intervention, policy or programme works, or to understand what makes an intervention, policy or programme more or less likely to be implemented (Tricco et al., 2016a). This, in turn, requires ‘other types of search approaches (e.g. snowballing of articles, focusing on identification of key theories)’ (Tricco et al., 2016b, 20) as well as others covered in this chapter.

The time and cost associated with producing systematic reviews offer a further challenge to their use in supporting decision-making (Tricco et al., 2017). Technical aspects of the search process are challenged by the rapid review movement which has reinterpreted ‘How far should you go?’ (Ogilvie et al., 2005) as ‘How little searching is enough?’ (Booth, 2010). One inevitable result is that three assumptions of the ‘systematic review catechism’ – the question, the comprehensive search and the privileging of rigour – are all receiving critical scrutiny.

Introduction

This chapter seeks to investigate and establish the nature of open government and the role of data, records and archives in promoting and enabling open government around the world. It identifies key issues around open government from the literature reviews and from the research-in-practice undertaken as part of the InterPARES Trust (hereinafter ITrust) project. In its conclusion it draws out some lessons for citizens, public organizations, records professionals and records educators working in the arena of open government to demonstrate the vital role that data and records play in enabling open government activities.

Definitions

This section sets out definitions of the main concepts and terms that will be referred to in the chapter.

The ITrust Terminology Database defines open government as:

Terms used in this definition are also themselves defined in the ITrust Terminology Database. Accountability is defined as ‘the obligation to answer for actions for which one is responsible’.

Transparency is defined as ‘(the condition of) timely disclosure of information about an individual's or organization's activities and decisions, especially to support accountability to all stakeholders’.

Citizen engagement is defined as:

Citizen engagement initiatives may make use of technologies to connect with citizens. Synonyms include citizen participation, civic participation, civic engagement and open dialogue. These issues are treated in detail in Chapter 4 and are not discussed here.

In order to deliver open government, public authorities need to proactively release data and information. Two related definitions are, therefore, open data, defined as ‘data available to anyone that may be used for any purpose and that is in a structure that facilitates its use at little or no charge’ (ITrust Terminology) and open information, that is, ‘the release of government records and published materials for public use, typically in unstructured formats’ (Leveille and Timms, 2015).

Introduction

This chapter summarises findings from two InterPARES Trust (hereinafter ITrust) research projects that are particularly relevant to the work of libraries, archives and museums, the institutions that constitute the cultural heritage sector. In Canada, researchers explored the extent to which pluralised pers - pectives were reflected in the early policies of a cultural heritage institution – a court mandated centre tasked with acknowledging a history of violence, while firmly rooted in that history. New Zealand researchers considered issues relating to trust from the perspective of Indigenous views of digitised language resources. These studies reflect the differing priorities and concerns of the regions in which they were based, nevertheless both have findings that are relevant to other countries and jurisdictions.

Multiple and diverse perspectives

Archives and archivists play critical roles in ensuring that national memories do not solely represent dominant or majority perspectives. As conjectured by Anne Gilliland and colleagues:

… recordkeepers and archivists play a central role in shaping cultural identity and memory, forming national historical legacies, and ensuring societal and institutional accountability through their role in capturing, managing, and preserving records and making them accessible to users.

(Gilliland et al., 2008, 88)

The extent to which this happens in everyday practice will undoubtedly influence trust in the institutions enabling access to cultural heritage. The digital environment provides considerable opportunities to work with a broader range of communities and perspectives than many archives and archivists have in the past. Research in Canada and New Zealand provides further insight into the issues and challenges involved in this complex area.

Canada: policy and plurality

Researchers in Canada undertook a case study of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), Winnipeg, Manitoba, investigating how making information digitally accessible influenced initial steps to address issues of plurality and trust related to records made available by the NCTR. The following background provides a historical account of the context leading to the establishment of the NCTR as it is critical to acknowledge and understand the resilience of the Indigenous peoples in that nation-state, the multitude of harms, abuse and denial that the NCTR exists to address and the ongoing influence of practices and institutions with colonial foundations.

Partnering for Preservation

Partners for Preservation is an important and timely volume, wonderfully curated and framed by the vision of the volume's editor, Jeanne Kramer-Smyth. The sections and chapters build the case that partnering for preservation in the digital world is both necessary and mutually beneficial. We have learned that to demonstrate good digital practice and to build sustainable digital preservation programs, we must work within and across an array of domains, bringing together specialists in evolving combinations. As explained in the volume's introduction, ‘Archivists cannot navigate the flood of technology and change alone. This book aims to help build bridges between archivists and those in other professions who are facing and navigating our common struggles. If archivists can build relationships with those in other professions, we can increase the tools and best practices available to everyone.’

Kramer-Smyth explains ‘each of the ten chapters presented here was written by a subject matter expert from outside the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) community. The topics were selected to highlight ten digital challenges being faced by other professions.’ Challenges that have clear relevance and value through - out the digital community. She adds, ‘My hope is that the chapters of this book can inspire archivists across the profession and around the world to see the potential that exists in partnering with others struggling to solve digital challenges.’

Her introduction highlights the flexibility that is built into the volume – the text lends itself to allowing readers to consume the chapters in one gulp, in sections, or individually. This balance of cohesion and modularity echoes core aspects of digital practice that is the focus of the volume. As members of the digital community, we need to be generalists to have an overall sense of the evolving landscape and specialists as our practice advances. No individual can go it alone, understanding this is key to developing sustainable digital programs and practice, a principle that the volume addresses intentionally and eloquently.

Each of the chapters is well constructed and documented, explaining complex and technical topics in understandable and approachable ways. The authors are storytellers with interesting perspectives based on a wealth of accumulated experience. The chapters include definitions, both formal and working, that have value in navigating these topics in local settings.

We live today in a society characterised by quick technological develop - ments and rapid processes of change. Technological developments have automated processes that used to be carried out by manual labour, whilst new professions and work tasks have emerged. Earlier generations were accustomed to lifelong positions in the same company. Nowadays people search for work opportunities in a global market, experience more frequent career changes, must learn new skills throughout their careers and manage the increasingly fluid boundaries between work life and home life. Even our work environments have changed: as Alvin Toffler's (1980) vision of the ‘paperless offices’ from 50 years ago is now being realised, we are starting to move into the state of ‘peopleless offices’ in which work is conducted in digital rather than physical spaces. In the peopleless offices, an organization's workforce collectively carry out their work in digital, rather than physical workplaces. Many workplaces are already now hybrids where the work activities addressed, tools utilised and information con - sumed are the same no matter whether engaged in at the office or at home.

The role of information is essential in all these processes, as a resource for learning, managing change, developing and running processes and creating professional networks. One of the most significant changes in work is the incorporation of information technology into almost every area of work life, changing how we work, where we work and what work we do. This information revolution within our workplaces calls for a new examination of information, information technology and information practices within the modern workplace and this is what this book seeks to do: provide a comprehensive account of information in the modern workplace. It includes a set of chapters examining and reviewing the major concepts within workplace information, from overarching themes of information cultures and information ecologies to strategic concerns of information management and governance, and detailed accounts of the nature of information artefacts themselves. The topic is international and the text reflects this; whilst there are many cultural, geographical and organizational factors that can influence information work environments, there are also strong commonalities that cut across these boundaries.

Introduction

This scene-setting chapter provides an overview of the range of challenges and issues relating to trust and digital records in the cloud. A high-level framework is used as a vehicle for considering those that emerged from the work of the InterPARES Trust undertaken across the range of domains referred to in Chapter 1. Some of the challenges and issues are sufficiently significant and bounded that they are covered in subsequent chapters in their own right, while others feature in a number of chapters or are largely addressed in this chapter (e.g. security, policy models, cloud contracts, legal issues, roles and responsibilities).

Beginning with a brief introduction to cloud computing, including its nature, services and some associated legal issues, the framework is then introduced, followed by a discussion of each thematic group of challenges and issues with reference to further detail in other chapters or other publications. Issues of trust, including perceptions of trust, run throughout the book.

Cloud computing: an introduction

The ‘cloud’ is understood in the context of this research as a broad range of infrastructures and services distributed across a network (typically the internet) that are scalable on demand and that are designed to support management of high volumes of digital materials. Because ‘cloud’ – as a general term – is used in so many contexts and implemented in a variety of ways, its meaning is so broad that it is exceptionally nebulous. To the extent the term has been appropriated by marketing, a specific technical definition may be lost in hype. Often it connotes outsourcing some or all aspects of an organization's information technology services. (Pearce-Moses, 2018, s.v. cloud).

As with many developments, the origins of cloud computing have been credited to various individuals. The computer scientist John McCarthy is thought to have been the first to suggest the concept of using computer timesharing or ‘utility computing’ in the late 1950s/early 1960s (Wikipedia, 2018). The term ‘cloud computing’ is thought to have been used by staff at the Compaq computer company in the late 1960s, with Professor Ramnath Chellappa, at the University of Texas, being the first person to use it more publicly in a 1997 lecture (Madhavaiah, Bashir and Shafi, 2012; Mishra, 2014). However, staff at Oracle are also credited with its development (Bort, 2012).

While memory, privacy and transparency have long been cornerstones of archival practice in the analogue world, the crossover into the digital realm presents new challenges. The chapters in Part 1 explore the digital challenges being tackled by lawyers, journalists and privacy experts. In each example, consider the ways that these other com munities are struggling with and solving their digital problems. The archives theme I see throughout this section is access. How do we ensure it? How do we balance the lure of technology and desire for access with the interests of the individual? Technology is forcing change in the way we think about inheritance, the way that lawyers cite sources, the way that journalists work, and the way that personal information is often immediately accessible online.

Introduction

In today's society, information artefacts are omnipresent. In this chapter, we introduce them as part of a conceptual framework for workplace information, and, accordingly, within the scope of information science. We analyse them from three theoretical underpinnings: materiality, plasticity and context. Information artefacts are outlined as information sources and information channels from the perspective of workers. Information sources are commonly understood as carriers of information and knowledge, and information channels as means of connecting to those sources. In addition, we present three categories of information tools: tools for storage, for collaboration and for retrieval and searching, and make a closer examin - ation of the concepts of information systems, social media and enterprise information search. The artefacts’ agency in the context of work is illustrated through three central information-related activities: information seeking, information searching and information needs. We conclude by addressing two new areas of future research and development concerning information artefacts at workplaces: collegial inclusion and forms of expertise.

In our case, the objects of interest are those that deal with information or knowledge, either by encompassing information and knowledge, providing access to them, or facilitating the production of them. It is tempting to provide a seemingly simple example, such as a book or a search engine, but as the chapter will illustrate, information artefacts are complex phenomena that do not neatly organize themselves into straightforward categories or hierarchies. The conceptualisation of information artefacts acknowledges their agency in information interactions as well as their contextual transformations. This makes them different from the other, but related, concept of information objects that are viewed as more static, storable and findable items (cf. Chapter 6, ‘Information attributes’). We perform this conceptual analysis of information artefacts in the area of workplace information: that is, with a focus on information and knowledge in instances of work, and as part of the interdisciplinary field of information science.

During nearly all of our waking time we interact with some kind of information artefacts. Let us take as an example Ann, who is a cardiologist in a large city hospital. In the mornings when Ann wakes up early, she listens to the morning news on the radio, if she has more time she prefers to read the newspaper whilst having breakfast.

Introduction

Attitudinal shifts fostered by technological advancements pose the greatest challenges to the disposition of records and information today. Some believe, and advocate, that we should keep everything because storage is cheap and we never know when we might need it. Google encourages us with statements like this: ‘Never delete anything, always use data – it's what Google does’ (Kershaw, quoted in Hardy, 2015). However, others believe that ‘even in this world of “never delete anything”, secure, compliant information disposition has its place!’ (Franks, 2017).

If you are a supporter of this second premise, you understand that records cannot be disposed of unless the reasons for creating them in the first place are understood. Disposition can be defined as ‘The destruction or transfer of records as specified by a retention schedule’ (Pearce-Moses, 2018, s.v. disposition).

Retention is the responsibility of the organization to maintain ‘records for a period of time until their authorized disposition by destruction or transfer’ (Pearce-Moses, 2018, s.v. retention). The retention schedule provides a comprehensive list of each group of related records treated as a unit for retention purposes (records series) and the length of time each is to be maintained – regardless of their format (e.g. electronic and physical) and location (e.g. on premises and in the cloud). This holds true, as well, whether the records and information are in the physical custody of the organization or a third party.

In this chapter, we call upon the findings of four studies that explore the principles of records retention and disposition in a cloud environment and identify ten best practices based on those principles.

The first study, Policies for Government Records Produced by a Community Cloud (Barnard, 2018), addressed transparency, access to information and responsibility for records management in the cloud, including the topics of appraisal, retention schedules and disposition. The second study, Preserving Records and Managing their Life-cycle in a Multi-provenance Digital Government Environment – a case study on a government electronic system: SIGEPE (Lacombe Rocha et al., 2017), considered retention and disposition in the context of controlling records in the physical custody of a cloud service provider.

Introduction

This chapter discusses the certification of digital records and their long-term preservation as authentic records. Two scenarios in which the records’ trustworthiness might be questioned are examined. The first scenario addresses digital records and their potential inadmissibility as evidence to external audits. The examples from the African context, and particularly from South Africa, are discussed, followed by an analysis of the framework to certify the trustworthiness of digital records that support the audit process.

The second scenario examines challenges of long-term preservation of digitally signed or sealed records relying on certificates which normally have a short life span. It focuses on long-term preservation of the validity information of digital signatures or seals. A blockchain-based model, showing that periodical re-signing or re-timestamping of records is not necessary, is presented. Even though the two scenarios are focused on the auditing process and the digitally signed or sealed records, both the framework and the model can be applied broadly, wherever records need to be relied on as accurate and authentic. In order to better understand the two scenarios, a discussion of the concept of authenticity is offered.

Authentic digital records

The widespread use of technology to conduct government activities has resulted in an increased creation of digital records. This development brings with it issues about the reliability and authenticity of digital records (Park, 2001, 270).

Duranti and Thibodeau (2006) identify three types of digital records: (1) computer stored records; (2) computer generated records; and (3) computer stored and generated records. Computer stored records contain human statements. They are created in the course of business and can be in the form of, for example, e-mail messages or word-processing documents. They may be used as substantive evidence, i.e. evidence of their content. In comparison, computer generated records do not contain human statements. They are the output of a computer program designed to process input following a defined algorithm, for example server log-in records from internet service providers, ATM records, etc. They may be used as demonstrative evidence, i.e. evidence of the action from which they result. Finally, computer stored and generated records are a combination of the two previously mentioned types. An example of such a record may be a spreadsheet record that has received human input followed by computer processing, i.e. the mathematical operations of the spreadsheet program. These records may be used as substantive and/or demonstrative evidence.

Methods, technology and people

The first part of this book described the developments that are taking place in the methods of systematic searching. The methods have been applied in many subject areas beyond evidence-based medicine. Chapter 2 considered qualitative evidence, realist reviews and mixed methods, while Chapter 5 covered the value of unpublished data and grey literature. Chapter 3 set out some of the techniques that have been applied in broad-based topics, such as in the social sciences, Chapter 4 showed how to choose sources across a range of disciplines and Chapter 6 highlighted the potential to use social media in a range of topics.

Methods have been established in topic areas beyond the scope of this book. One productive area has been environmental management, where techniques and sources are being tested, discussed and applied. There is guidance on doing an ecological synthesis (Bayliss and Beyer, 2015) and systematic searching for environmental evidence (Livoreil et al., 2017) that has assessed the role of grey literature (Haddaway and Bayliss, 2015). There have been similar efforts in the topic area of food and feed safety to understand the types of evidence required (European Food and Safety Authority, 2010) and how it might be systematically identified (Wood et al., 2018). The challenge is to continue developing methods in new directions that are appropriate to the subject and types of evidence that it generates. Information specialists will need to both stay up to date with innovations in evidence synthesis and lead the response in terms of adapting information retrieval practice.

New processes and systems are being built to exploit the full potential of technology. The text mining tools described in Chapter 7 highlighted that it may not be feasible to maintain a clear demarcation between the search and screening process as the information specialist may need to work with results sorted by algorithms, use relevance ranking or help to decide which cut-off points to use. Chapter 8 showed that we may no longer need to think of systematic reviews in terms of whole documents and that it may be fruitful to consider the evidence in more granular terms. Chapter 9 has shown how automation is revolutionising the way evidence is identified across whole subject areas and can be integrated efficiently into reviews using classification systems.

Introduction

With the current popularity and increasingly important role of the world wide web in western society, many media controllers of previously offline information collections have chosen to follow this public shift towards the online information realm and uploaded their collection(s) on the web. However, this uploading of information collections on the web is not without consequences for individuals if the collection contains personal information. This became clear in what is taken to be the first big ‘right to be forgotten’ (RTBF) case, which evolved around two articles from 1998 in the online archive of the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia (CJEU, 2014). The two articles consisted of just a few sentences and referred to a forced sale of property of a citizen – let's call him ‘G’ – due to a social security debt. G was disturbed by the online availability of these articles because the issue was long resolved. When his attempts to have the articles removed from La Vanguardia's website failed, he focused his wish ‘to be forgotten’ on Google Search, which displayed the articles as top results for a search on his full name. In the end, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decided the case in G's favour and ordered Google Search to remove the URLs linking the 1998 articles to G's name from the search results. The CJEU held the opinion that an individual can have the right to have certain information removed (in this case the search results) – even if it is truthful information – if the information ‘at this point in time … appears, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, to be inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes of the processing’ (CJEU, 2014).

The Google Spain case is a foretaste of the ‘official’ RTBF, which is formulated in Article 17 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in May 2018. It gives individuals under certain conditions the right to ‘obtain from the controller the erasure of personal data concerning him or her’ (GDPR, Article 17). (In this chapter I take the GDPR as given, now implemented, and will not spend time arguing about all its problematic aspects and weaknesses.

Introduction

In this chapter I will talk about colour. Not colour in a general sense, but colour as it is rendered on a display. I am a colour scientist by profession. Most of my professional experience revolves around computer displays and improving visual experience on displays. In the imaging industry, many professionals with expertise in colour science typically work for manufacturers of electronic devices like smartphones, tablets, laptops, monitors, or even graphics processors and PC chipsets. Some work for camera or printer manufacturers. Besides the imaging industry, media and entertainment companies, and companies that manufacture paints, textiles, lighting products and so on and so forth, also employ colour scientists. The manufacturers need colour scientists and engineers to develop methods and algorithms (probably in collaboration with hardware and software engineers) to achieve superior colour experience. A lot has to do with the fundamentals of human vision and perception – how our visual system works and perceives colours. Not surprisingly, colour science is a multidisciplinary field involving physics, chemistry, physiology, statistics, computer science and psychology.

When creating and consuming a digital artwork, accurate colour reproduction on a display is one of the fundamental requirements. While cameras and printers play a vital role in archival and conservation work, specific focus of this chapter will be on displays and related topics.

I will start this discussion by describing why display colour accuracy is important, when it is important, and for who. Then, I will get into the details of how display technology has and is still evolving, and how that has impacted the notion of colour accuracy. In the next section, I will share some of my first-hand experiences of various challenges a device manufacturer faces in achieving high levels of display colour accuracy. Then comes the software aspects. I will try to familiarise you with some of the software features that can positively or negatively affect colour accuracy, so you are aware whether, when and how to use them. The section after that has some tips on how to ensure that colour accuracy is preserved during the digitisation of artwork, and afterwards during its consumption. Finally I consider some of the unsolved challenges we face today, and the outlook for the future.

Introduction

This chapter discusses information management at the workplace It includes the personal information management of individual workers and the organizational approach to internal information resources, as well as environmental scanning (i.e. the collection of information from the external environment). The concept of information management and related concepts are explained and the differences between them identified. We present core definitions and theories and explore the constituent parts of information management as an organizational activity. In each case, we try to demonstrate the relevance of these activities to workplace information. Finally, we will draw some conclusions and pro - pose a short bibliography for researchers.

Information management and the workplace

Information management can be viewed from different perspectives: those of information specialists, information system developers, business man - agers, human resource managers and employees. Each of these will have a slightly different view and use different terms for the same phenomena, or name the same things differently. Regardless of this, there is a common ground for information management in the workplace, be it a corporate, public or non-governmental organization. From the point of view of infor - mation in the workplace, we can identify two directions of research, one for ‘corporate information management’, and one for ‘personal infor mation management’.

Related to the concept of information management is a number of other concepts, which strive to identify what is managed in more precise or narrower terms. Records management, information resource management, information systems management, document and data management or similar concepts belong to this category. Others focus on the tools used in information management, such as information life cycle, information audit, environmental scanning, taxonomies, discovery systems or intranet. We are not going to give an exhaustive overview of these, but will outline the relevance of some of them to workplace information and we will illustrate some of these different concepts by the examples of Ann, Johan and Liila.

Ann, our cardiologist, will care most about the records of her patients. Following standard rules and using professional terminology, she will meticulously record her observations, such as pulse or temperature, and stories her patients tell, in the medical record. This record will include previous data about her patient recorded by other doctors: therapists, surgeons, ophthalmologists, etc.

Introduction

The internet has transformed the way in which we search for information and interactive Web 2.0 internet-based applications, such as social media, have advanced the way we use the internet. So, what do we mean by social media? A commonly used definition is that social media are any web-based computer-mediated tools to co-create, share or exchange information, ideas, pictures or videos in virtual communities and networks (such as message boards, social networks, patient forums, Twitter, blogs and Facebook) (Obar and Wildman, 2015). Estimates indicate that there are 3.58 billion internet users (Statista, 2018a) and 2.46 billion social media users worldwide (Statista, 2018b). In 2017, 66% of adults aged 16 and over in Great Britain and 69% of the public in the USA used the internet for some type of social media (such as Facebook or Twitter) and the trend is for the proportion of social network users to increase further (Office for National Statistics, 2017; Pew Research Center, 2018).

Facebook and Twitter may be the most widely known but there are a multitude of other social media networks, each with a different focus. For instance, while some sites aim to connect people (professionally or socially), others are platforms to share news, ideas or information (either with generic or a topic-specific focus to the site). Some social media sites are completely open to the public, others require logins or have privacy restrictions and some social media sites allow both private and public information (for instance through changing the settings). The format of posts also varies from text, images or videos and in some instances may be limited by size (either by characters or file size).

Social media are used to discuss a wide range of issues and views from hobbies and interests to trivia and politics. An increasingly common use of social media, however, is to discuss health issues. Patients often now use social media as a source for information on their health condition, to share their experiences and to find social support. In 2015, 80% of internet users in the USA searched online for health information and 34% read someone else's commentary about health or medical issues (Fox, 2011). In Great Britain, 53% of adults aged 16 and over used the internet for looking for health-related information within the last three months (Office for National Statistics, 2017).

Introduction

Work is central to most of what we care about as individuals and as com - munities. Work provides a sense of identity expressed through work roles; most of us would answer the question ‘What are you?’ with a line such as a ‘I am a journalist/doctor/lawyer/regional manager/coastal zone advisor’. It provides a sense of purpose – ‘I make sure the public is informed; I save lives; I help create a fair justice system; I make sure the environment is protected; I monitor our coastlines’ – that may take years of training to achieve and must be constantly nurtured with new information. Work also provides economic gain that funds education, health services, the arts and most areas of civic life.

Work is central to how we organize many areas of our life. University and college training organizes us within disciplines and provides disciplinespecific skills. Professional societies, guilds, trades, crafts and unions help us differentiate what is important and different about our work from that of other people. Even specialist buildings such as hospitals or schools encourage us to see some types of work as belonging in different spaces to other types of work. To do our work we need information. The work we do creates a specific filter for recognising important information for that work even during our leisure time and it creates information-related habits and awareness. A part of a journalist's identity, for example, is scanning for news, which may happen almost automatically and unintentionally during leisure. A doctor reads medical information with a different preunderstanding from that of a layperson. A lawyer picks up on trial-related news, while the regional manager learns to read natural signs that are invisible for someone without that filter. A part of the identity of a coastal zone advisor is an understanding of the natural environment. These infor - mation processes are often unconscious and not recognised. For work itself, however, these processes need to be made implicit and managed. Information science works to reveal, understand and implement more efficient information processes.

Information science studies work in many different ways; sometimes the focus is on higher-level socio-cultural aspects of workplace environments, sometimes the focus is on specific activities of curating or managing information and the systems that we use to perform these activities.