Bonnie Nardi

Bonnie Nardi is best known as the lead author of "Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart", Nardi & O'Day, (MIT Press, 1998). She is widely known among librarians - especially research, reference and digital librarians - for Chapter 7 of Information Ecologies, which focused on librarians as keystone species in information ecologies.

Nardi's book inspired the title of a UK conference "Information Ecologies: the impact of new information 'species"' [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=event_ecologies_1298] hosted, "inter alia", by the UK Office of Library Networking, now known by its acronym UKOLN, and led to a keynote address by Nardi at a 1998 Library of Congress Institute on "Reference Service in a Digital Age". [ [http://www.loc.gov/rr/digiref/archive/nardi.html] Dead link|date=March 2008]

Bonnie Nardi is currently a professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. She had written "Information Ecologies" while a researcher at ATT Labs Research.

Nardi's self-described theoretical orientation is "activity theory", a philosophical framework developed by the Russian psychologists Vygotsky, Luria, Leont'ev, and their students. "My interests are user interface design, collaborative work, computer-mediated communication, and theoretical approaches to technology design and evaluation." She is currently conducting an ethnographic study of World of Warcraft.

Nardi blogs at [http://bon-blog.blogspot.com/ http://bon-blog.blogspot.com/]

Most recently Nardi collaborated with Victor Kaptelinin and wrote "Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design". This book discusses Activity Theory and it creates a base for understanding our relationship with technology.

Background

Nardi received her undergraduate degree from University of California at Berkley and her PHD from the School of Social Sciences at University of California Irvine in 1977. Nardi also spent a year in Western Samoa doing postdoctoral research.

Nardi is married and has three children.

Nardi and Library Science

In her book, "Information Ecologies" Nardi passionately argues that “Human expertise, judgment and creativity can be supported, but not replaced by computer-based tools.” She argues that we can not, either with technophilia or technophobia, view technological change as “inevitable.” Rather, she challenges us to be critical users of technology who actively engage in conversation on the social impacts of technology. We must then, guided by our moral values influence society’s institutions, libraries for example, to adopt responsible technology use.

While all of this has clear application to the Information Science field, one can also look to Bonnie Nardi for her explicit praise of librarians. In a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technology, her writings clearly spell two words for librarians—job security. As a designer of software herself, she has asked the question, “Could an “intelligent software agent” replace librarians?” and decisively responded, “No.”

In "Information Ecologies" she clearly labels librarians a “keystone species.” In biological terms, a keystone species is one that is critical to the survival of an ecosystem. To follow the analogy, a librarian is indispensable in the information ecosystem. While information is increasingly available via digital resources, librarians are irreplaceable in their ability to speak the language of search systems and then to retrieve that information.

She further praises librarians beyond their understanding of the necessary language to produce desired search results. Rather, it is the imperceptible skill of a librarian, via the reference interview, to guide the researcher to exactly what they want in. It is through a dialog of clarifying questions and restatement of assumptions that librarian and patron develop a strategy to meet the patron’s need and produce the best results.

Through experience, librarians also think of sources patrons may have overlooked, know of additional print/online sources and have the ability to connect patrons with otherwise proprietary information. Unlike computers, librarians develop a rapport with their patrons, enabling them to cater searches to the needs and search style they already expect from the patron. They even have the omniscience to recognize “false drops” and the ingenuity to renegotiate searches with updated/outdated language based on the style of a database. In essence, a librarian is the intercessor “with heart” between the patron and the information—someone who actually cares and wants to help patrons meet their objective.

Nardi in Her Own Words

Activity Theory

Activity theory proposes that consciousness is shaped by practice, that people and artifacts mediate our relationship with reality. Consciousness is produced in the enactment of activity with other people and things, rather than being something confined inside a human head. Activity theory began in Russia with the work of Lev Vygotsky in the 1920s, continuing through his student Aleksey Leontiev, and then through students of Leontiev. This work has been influential in education, organizational design, and interaction design. Activity theory works well with design because activity theorists have always tested their theories in practical ways and believe that application is an outcome of theory, not a separate activity. In some of my writings I have discussed how, as a psychological theory, activity theory can be scaled to collaborative settings without losing sight of individual participants in an activity. ( [http://www.darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/] )

Information Ecology

There is a strong need to find new ways to think about the social and cultural changes that come with new technologies. I have examined some such changes with respect to the work of librarians and others discussed in Information Ecologies.Our limited ability to predict change coupled with enormous human creativity has led to a situation of instability in which systemic effects of technological change can only be responded to after the fact. In the current global economy we have efficient ways of distributing technology but ineffectual means of addressing negative consequences (such as pollution from wireless devices). New political and social forms are needed. Movements such as green design, life cycle analysis, and cradle to cradle design address some problems and can be applied to digital technologies. Social changes are more difficult to characterize and require better theorizing. One of my interests is in what I call "placeless organizations" which are distributed groups dedicated to transforming practice. In the modern context they inevitably make use of computer-mediated communication as they attempt to "co-construct," in activity theory terms, the way things are done. Examples of placeless organizations are Open Source software development projects, Doctors without Borders, the World Trade Organization, and transformations in scientific disciplines from "small science" to "big science". Understanding how placeless organizations are effective with relatively few people is a current focus of my research. [http://www.darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/#pr4]

References

ee also

* information ecology
* information species
* digital library
* digital librarian

External links

* [http://www.darrouzet-nardi.net/bonnie/ home page]
* [http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ UKOLN]
* [http://www.ics.uci.edu/informatics/ Department of Informatics]
* [http://www.research.att.com/ ATT Labs Research]

Nardi Publications

Books

Kaptelinin, V. and Nardi, B. (2006). Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design. In print. Cambridge: MIT Press. Nardi, B. and O’Day, V. (1999). Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart. Cambridge: MIT Press. Nardi, B., Editor. (1996). Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction. Cambridge: MIT Press. Nardi, B. (1993). A Small Matter of Programming: Perspectives on End User Computing. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Special Issues of Journals

Jones, M., Nardi, B. and Mynatt, E. (2005). Social Impacts of Technology. A special issue of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 12 (2). Nardi, B. and Redmiles, D. (2002). Activity Theory and the Practice of Design. A special issue of The Journal of Computer-supported Cooperative Work 11 ( 1-2).

Nardi, B. and Y. Engeström. (1998). A Web on the Wind: The Structure of Invisible Work. A special issue of The Journal of Computer-supported Cooperative Work 8 (1-2). Introduction to the issue.

Journal Articles, Peer-reviewed

Nardi, B. (2005). Beyond bandwidth: Dimensions of connection in interpersonal interaction. The Journal of Computer-supported Cooperative Work 14: 91-130. Nardi, B. (2005). Objects of desire: Power and passion in collaborative activity. Journal of Mind, Culture and Activity 12: 37-51. Nardi, B., Schiano, D., Gumbrecht, M., and Swartz, L. (2004). Why We Blog. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery. December. Pp. 41-46. Nardi, B., Whittaker, S., Isaacs, E., Creech, M., Johnson, J., and Hainsworth, J. (2002). Contact

Conference Proceedings Papers, Peer-reviewed

Nardi, B., Schiano, D. and Gumbrecht, M. (2004). Blogging as social activity, or, Would you let 900 million people read your diary? Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. New York: ACM Press. Pp. 222-228. Nardi, B., Whittaker, S. and Bradner, E. (2000). Interaction and outeraction: Instant messaging in action. Proceedings Conference on Computer-supported Cooperative Work. New York: ACM Press. Pp. 79-88. Nardi, B., Anderson, K. and Erickson, T. (1995). Filing and finding computer files. Proceedings East-West Conference on Human Computer Interaction. Moscow, Russia. July 4–8. Pp. 162–179. Nardi, B. and Johnson, J. (1994). User preferences for task-specific vs. generic application software. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems. New York: ACM Press. Pp. 392–398. Nardi , B., Schwarz, H., Kuchinsky, A., Leichner, R., Whittaker, S. and Sclabassi, R. (1993). Turning away from talking heads: Video-as-data in neurosurgery. Proceedings InterCHI 93. New York: ACM. Pp. 327–334. Reprinted in S. Emmott (ed). Information Superhighways. London: Academic Press. Nardi, B. (1992). Studying context: A comparison of activity theory, situated action models and distributed cognition. Proceedings East-West Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. August 4–8, St. Petersburg, Russia. Pp. 352–359. Gantt, M. and Nardi, B. (1992). Gardeners and gurus: Patterns of collaboration among CAD users. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems. Pp. 107–117. Nardi, B. and Miller, J. (1990). The spreadsheet interface: A basis for end user programming. Proceedings Interact'90. Pp. 977–983. Nardi, B. and Miller J. (1990). An ethnographic study of distributed problem solving in spreadsheet development Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. Pp. 197–208. Ciccarelli, E. and Nardi, B. (1988). Browsing schematics: Query-filtered graphs with context nodes. Proceedings Second Annual Workshop on Space Operations, Automation and Robotics. Pp. 193–204. Nardi, B. and Simons, R. (1986). Model-based reasoning and AI problem solving. Proceedings Conference on High Level Tools for Knowledge-based Systems. Pp. 56-68.

Book Chapters, Peer -reviewed

Fisher, D. and Nardi, B. (2006). Soylent and Contact

Professional Magazines

Kaptelinin, V., Nardi, B. and Macaulay, C. (1999). The Activity Checklist: A tool for representing the "space" of context. interactions magazine, July. Pp. 27-39. Barreau, D. and Nardi, B. (1995). Finding and reminding: File organization from the desktop. SIGCHI Bulletin 27: 39–43.

CD-Rom

Nardi, B. and Reilly, B. (1996). Digital Photography at Lincoln High: An Interactive Ethnography.

Opinion/Essay

Nardi, B., O'Day, V. and Valauskas, E. (1996). Put a Good Librarian, Not Software, in Driver's Seat. Christian Science Monitor, June 4. Winner of the 1996. Special Libraries Association Media Award.