Unfortunately, the big ideas and great insights of Information Science are mostly stuck in a print-based Stone Age, gathering dust and risking obsolescence. Long-standing tenets of our field reside mainly in the journal literature or sometimes in textbooks and both are locked behind expensive paywalls of elite university libraries. In late 2020, when my own teaching shifted online due to the COVID pandemic, I wanted to enliven my virtual classroom with multimedia content about Information Science only to discover dubious resources and huge gaps. While there are some terrific “one-offs” and many impressive YouTube channels produced by librarians (kudos!), the latter mainly focus on contemporary issues of practice. To my surprise, the most popular Information Science videos on YouTube that explain foundational concepts—such as the reference interview or Kuhlthau’s (1989) Information Search Process—were made by students as the outputs from course assignments. Hence, in this increasingly multimedia Information Age, newcomers have become the authorities and online gatekeepers to the literature and traditions of Information Science!

This situation motivated me to create INFideos, a YouTube channel of educational videos about the foundational ideas and literature of Information Science. The channel’s name is a portmanteau that combines “information” and “videos” and aptly reflects the topic. I am excited to share this resource with the Information Matters community and invite everyone to visit and use the videos in their teaching. A 75-second Welcome to My Channel trailer plays upon arrival and is the best starting point for newcomers.

INFideos are designed to appeal to students within all levels of Information Science degree programs. They have also been made with an eye to non-specialists, interdisciplinary visitors, and more seasoned information devotees moving into new areas. In length they range from 15 seconds to 17 minutes and are therefore not overwhelming or a large investment of time to watch. Each video is enlivened by eclectic music and striking imagery. Perhaps most importantly, seminal concepts of Information Science are updated and re-interpreted for this era, and they are endowed with greater emotional resonance. My viewers thus far have praised the videos’ high production values and their deft balance of scholarly rigor and playful charm.

To better organize this resource, INFideos appear in series. That way, instructors and students alike can become familiar with the consistent structure and purpose across each collection to more easily watch and learn.

The What Makes This Paper Great? series focuses on landmark papers of Information Science. After the featured work is introduced, I present its origins, context, structure, highlights and ultimate impacts. Every episode is a deep dive, and viewers will come to understand the rhetorical strategy of the publication at hand. Each video concludes with reflections on the strengths of the work, and throughout has entertaining insider stories and references. Any of the videos in this collection can be assigned freestanding to students, alongside the original paper. Alternatively, they may support lectures or class discussions in real time. Thus far, the What Makes This Paper Great? series features eight episodes, such as those below, and more are forthcoming.

Every episode of What Makes This Paper Great? also has a detailed and hyperlinked table of contents so that students or instructors can engage only what is needed. The table of contents from Episode 5: Neutral Questioning – A New Approach to the Reference Interview (Dervin & Dewdney, 1986)), is show below:

00:00     – Introduction
00:41     – Neutral Questioning: A New Approach…
01:22     – The Reference Interview
03:07     – Brenda Dervin (biography)
05:59     – Patricia Dewdney (biography)
06:47     – Structure of the Paper
07:33     – The Paper’s Introduction
08:10     – The Theory: “Sense-Making”
09:39     – What is Neutral Questioning?
12:06     – Application Tests of Neutral Questioning
13:16     – What Makes This Paper Great?

With a lighter touch, the Tiny Video series delivers an audiovisual amuse bouche between 15 and 30 seconds long. In keeping with the times, the Tiny Videos resemble content on TikTok or spirited advertisements for scholarly products. Each one illustrates an important concept in Information Science, such as Buckland’s (1991) information-as-thing, Erdelez’s (1999) information encountering, or Metoyer-Duran’s (1991) insights into the information behavior of gatekeepers. Though slight (in time), they are meant to have a big impact on curiosity. To that end, many make a surreal or dream-like impression, like this meditation on Elfreda Chatman’s (1996) concept of information poverty. Of the 22 (and counting) Tiny Videos, shown below, several are drawn from longer INFideos works and contain links for viewers to follow and learn more.  It is my hope that the Tiny Videos go viral and spread the great work of our field far and wide. Everyone is welcome to use these diminutive multimedia artifacts in lectures, course websites, and correspondence with students.  

Finally, there is the Information and Leisure series, which introduces leisure as a setting for information behaviour, a topic that is my specialty. This troika of linked videos provides almost an hour’s worth of material and could be the foundation for an entire class session. 

INFideos also contains a handful of videos that do not fit perfectly into any series and therefore stand alone, namely How Do I Write a Theoretical or Conceptual Paper?, which was made with doctoral students and early career scholars in mind. Another, Pictorial Metaphors for Information, contributes an arts-informed perspective to our field’s long-running conversation about the nature of information.