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Information Science Macareindeer

Jenna Hartel
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Information Science Macareindeer

Jenna Hartel

Season’s Greetings from INFIDEOS, a YouTube channel of educational videos about Information Science. Information Science Macarena is a short (2-minute), light-hearted, holiday-themed celebration of some of our field’s colorful characters and their ideas. It was created with students in mind, but is a holiday gift to all enthusiasts of Information Science. As shown further below, it features Suzanne Briet, Jesse Shera, S. R. Ranganathan, Elfreda Chatman, and Paul Otlet (among others) singing and shaking their tails. Concepts such as document, information, and several information behavior models also have a place in the dance.  On a more serious note, an interactive Worksheet (available here) accompanies the video and can be used to guide and cajole students (working singly or in small groups) into better understandings of Information Science. 

Concerning its production, Information Science Macareindeer uses animation by JibJab, an American digital entertainment studio, best known for their amusing ecards. To assemble a visually coherent narrative of gamboling information scientists, I generated more than 20 JibJab ecards with differing combinations of people. Then, I edited short segments together in synch with a narrative about Information Science, of my own making. I am grateful to Hugh Samson, a doctoral student at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies of the University of Western Ontario, for introducing me to JibJab, which made this particularly entertaining video possible.

Launched in July of 2021, INFIDEOS is a YouTube channel featuring more than 75 original educational videos (and counting) about Information Science. At INFIDOES you will find the What Makes This Paper Great? series that goes deep into landmark papers of Information Science, revealing their origins, context, structure, highlights and ultimate impacts. With a lighter touch, the Tiny Video series delivers an audiovisual amuse bouche between 15 and 30 seconds long. The Tiny Videos are like advertisements for scholarly ideas and can enliven lectures, course websites or emails to students. Hear! Here! (Ideas for Doctoral Students) and Writing-Up Qualitative Research as Thematic Narrative are video collections that provide explicit instructions, respectively, for conceptualizing and disseminating Information Science research. To date, INFIDOES has had more than 40,000 visitors from around the world and is approaching 1,000 subscribers. Viewers have praised the channel’s high production values and balance of scholarly rigor, beautiful imagery, and playful spirit. INFIDOES was recognized as an “Awesome Library Thingy” on the podcast series, Libraries Lead in the New Normal, produced by Beth Patin, David Lankes, and Mike Eisenberg. INFIDEOS also received the ALISE Pratt-Servern Faculty Innovation Award for 2022. einde

Cite this article in APA as: Hartel, J. (2022, December 12). Information Science Macareindeer. Information Matters, Vol. 2, Issue 12. https://informationmatters.org/2022/12/information-science-macareindeer/

Author

  • I am an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. As an interdisciplinary social scientist devoted to the field of Library and Information Science (LIS), I conduct research in three related areas: 1) information and the "higher things in life" that are pleasurable and profound; 2) visual and creative research methods; and 3) the history and theory of LIS. In the Master of Information program at the Faculty of Information, I mostly teach graduate students in the Library and Information Science concentration. Both my research and teaching aim to be an imaginative forms of intervention in the field of LIS, through unorthodox projects such as Metatheoretical Snowman, Welcome to Library and Information Science, and the iSquare Research Program. See my website at jennahartel.info or my YouTube Channel, INFideos.

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Jenna Hartel

I am an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto. As an interdisciplinary social scientist devoted to the field of Library and Information Science (LIS), I conduct research in three related areas: 1) information and the "higher things in life" that are pleasurable and profound; 2) visual and creative research methods; and 3) the history and theory of LIS. In the Master of Information program at the Faculty of Information, I mostly teach graduate students in the Library and Information Science concentration. Both my research and teaching aim to be an imaginative forms of intervention in the field of LIS, through unorthodox projects such as Metatheoretical Snowman, Welcome to Library and Information Science, and the iSquare Research Program. See my website at jennahartel.info or my YouTube Channel, INFideos.