Cultural Production in a Digital Age

Citation

Calvert, P. (2005), "Cultural Production in a Digital Age", Online Information Review, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 561-562. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520510628936

This is a special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, so, unsurprisingly, it does not deal directly with the discipline of information management. It does, though, contain several articles on the production of cultural information, and that ought to be of interest to librarians and archivists dealing with that sort of material. The editor has used “an expansive concept of cultural production” concerned with “different kinds of symbolic, textual, and meaning‐making activities”. In particular the focus is on what happens to cultural products when they are made and disseminated via digital channels. If, indeed, cultural objects are being created and disseminated in a significantly different way from how it used to be done, then information managers need to know about it; because it is often through libraries that the dissemination occurs, and it is quite likely that the completed objects will be stored in a repository (library or archive) for later use. In the digital environment it becomes increasingly likely that incomplete objects will also be disseminated and stored in repositories, so an understanding of the creation of such objects is becoming increasingly important.

Galloway, in one of the more interesting articles for the information manager, draws a parallel between cultural production and computer networks. One of his points is that writers on culture in an internet age need to have a better understanding of technology before making their claims. His argument is that computer networks are diverse and open, which helps their defence against attack, and if cultural production followed the same example then “value comes less from the protectionist hoarding of social and cultural assets and more from the open deployment of those assets”. This seems to offer support to the creation of digital libraries, especially if they are in the public domain.

Another chapter of tangential interest to information management is Turow's “Audience construction and culture production: marketing surveillance in the digital age”. In this he argues that marketers are suggesting to computer users that we are so busy that each of us needs “personalisation” to help us save time. This is a ruse to enable them to install cookies and spy on us, he claims. If this is really what people believe, then it asks significant questions about personalising library portals.

This is a special issue of a periodical, so, not surprisingly, there is no cumulated index. Each article is thoroughly referenced, however. This is not an essential item for an information management collection, though some LIM academics will need to read it.