Dr Michael Olsson
Senior Lecturer, Communication Studies Group
Graduate Course Adviser (Information and Knowledge Management program), Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
BA (Syd), MA (UTS), PhD (UTS)
Email: Michael.Olsson@uts.edu.au
Phone: +61 2 9514 2722
Fax: +61 2 9514 2332
Room: CB03.05.47 (map)
Mailing address: PO Box 123,
Broadway NSW 2007,
Australia
Biography
Dr Michael Olsson is an active researcher in the field of information behaviour/information practices research, with a particular interest in information/knowledge sharing through in academic, professional and artistic communities. His work is essentially interdisciplinary and has appeared in leading international research journals and conferences in a range of different fields, including Information Studies, Communication and Knowledge Management. He is strongly associated with the emergence of new discourse analytic and social constructivist approaches to information research, focusing particularly on the social construction of information & knowledge and the inter-relationship of meaning and authority (Knowledge/Power). He has a strong interest in the relationship between theory, research and professional practice. He is the recipient (with Aroney and Van Leeuwen) of the 2011 UTS Excellence in Learning & Teaching Award for Strengthening the UTS Model of Learning. He is the Faculty Director of the Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre. He is Program Track Chair for the ‘Information’ Track at the prestigious 2012 American Society for Information Science & Technology Annual Meeting, to be held in Baltimore, MD 26-30 October, 2012.
Professional
Member, Research Committee, Australian Library & Information Association, 2008-.
Council Founding Member, International Council on Knowledge Management, 2007-.
Teaching areas
Language and Discourse; People, Information and Knowledge; Information Cultures; Information Research and Data Analysis; Information Architecture and Design; Ideas in History; Media, Information and Society
Research
Research interests
I am currently in the process of developing a new research project with collaborators in Australia, the USA and Europe — From Mud to Museum: Making Sense of Archaeological Artefacts. This project seeks to study archaeological practices in relation to artefacts from their discovery in the field, through their classification at collecting institutions, to their use by museum curators and historians to build narratives about the past. Drawing on theoretical and methodological approaches developed in my previous research, it will develop an understanding of the everyday information practices of archaeologists and museum professionals and provide insights to inform the design of digital tools to facilitate work practices.
My previous major research project, Making Sense of Shakespeare, looked at how theatre professionals (actors, designers, directors etc.) make sense of a culturally iconic author. The findings of the study were based on interviews with 35 theatre professionals in Canada, Finland and the UK, including 14 from the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada, North America’s largest and most prestigious classical repertory theatre, and 12 from Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Other participants include actors, writers and directors associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and the Central School of Speech & Drama in the UK and the Tampereen Työväen Teatteri in Finland. Publications based on this research have appeared in leading research journals including Library and Information Science Research and Libri, major international conferences including the 2009 Information: Interactions and Impact (i3) conference held at The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK, 22–25 June 2009 and the 2010 American Society for Information Science & Technology Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA 22-27 October 2010, as well as in a chapter of the forthcoming book Social Information Research.
Publications
Research book chapters
Halbwirth, S.J. & Olsson, M.R. 2007, 'Working in parallel: Themes in Knowledge Management and Information Behaviour' in Hawamdeh, S (eds), CREATING COLLABORATIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH KNOWLEDGE AND INNOVATION, World Scientific, Singapore, pp. 69-89.
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This paper brings together approaches, theories and research from two complementary fields: knowledge management and information behaviour research.
Olsson, M.R. 2007, 'Knowledge is Power: More than a bumper sticker Foucault's Discourse Analysis as a Conceptual Basis for Knowledge Management' in Christian Starcy, Franz Barachini, Suliman Hawamdeh (eds), Knowledge Management: Innovation, Technology and Cultures, World Scientific, Singapore, pp. 201-210.
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The phrase 'Knowledge is Power' has become a cliche in contemporary management discourse: a catch-cry taken up by executives, the media, politicians, motivational speaker and knowledge management professionals. Yet despite this, as several critics have noted (Schultze, 199; Olsson and Halbwirth, 2006) there has been relatively little attempt made by knowledge management writers to develop a credible conceptual foundation to examine the relationship between knowledge and power and their implications for knowledge management practice
Book chapters (other)
Olsson, M.R. 2010, 'Michel Foucault: Discourse PowerKnowledge and the Battle for Truth' in Gloria J. Leckie, Lisa M. Given, John E. Buschman (eds), Critical Theory for Library and Information Science: Exploring the Social from Across the Discipline, ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California, pp. 63-74.
Refereed journal articles
Olsson, M.R. 2010, 'All the World's a Stage - the Information Practices and Sense-Making of Theatre Professionals', Libri, vol. 60, no. 3, pp. 241-251.
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This paper reports on the findings of a study examining how theatre professionals (actors, directors and others) make sense of the works of a culturally iconic author (William Shakespeare). The study aims to address critique of prevailing approaches' excessive focus on active information seeking and searching (Julien 1999; Wilson 2000) by developing a more holistic approach, one which acknowledges the complexity of sense-making as more than the problem-solving behaviour of individuals -- as an embodied, social process, involving emotion as well as rationality. In doing so it draws on theoretical approaches from a range of different disciplines and traditions, including Dervin's Sense-Making, Foucault's discourse analysis and Derrida's deconstructionism. The findings of the study are based on interviews with 35 theatre professionals in Canada, Finland and the UK.
Olsson, M.R. 2010, 'The play's the thing: Theater professionals make sense of Shakespeare', Library and Information Science Research, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 272-280.
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This study examines how theater professionals (actors, directors and others) make sense of the works of a culturally iconic author (William Shakespeare). The research aims to address critique of the information studies/science field's excessive focus on active information seeking and searching by developing an alternative approach, and to understand sense-making as more than the problem-solving behavior of individuals: to see it as an embodied, social process, involving emotion as well as rationality. In doing so it draws on theoretical approaches from a range of different disciplines and traditions, including Dervin's sense-making, Foucault's discourse analysis and Derrida's deconstructionism
Olsson, M.R. 2009, 'Re-Thinking Our Concept Of Users', Australian Academic & Research Libraries, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 22-35.
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This article provides a critical analysis of some of the key theories and assumptions that underpin prevailing approaches to the concept of 'information user' in contemporary information research and professional practice, suggesting that they continue to reflect a tacitly systems-oriented focus. The author draws on the Sense-Making theories of Brenda Dervin and the discourse analytic work of Michel Foucault, as well as his own research, to outline a more holistic approach to understanding the complex relationship between people, information, and their social context. This recommendation includes a greater focus on context, on long-term relationships, and the complex role of emotion and embodiment in people's sense-making.
Olsson, M.R. 2007, 'Power/knowledge: The discursive construction of an author', Library Quarterly, vol. 77, no. 2, pp. 219-240.
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This article reports the findings of a study examining the social/discursive construction of an author (Brenda Dervin) by an international community of researchers (information behavior researchers). A crucial conceptual starting point for the study was
Olsson, M.R. 2005, 'Making Sense of Sense Making: Information behaviour Researchers Construct an "Author"', The Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 315-334.
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This paper reports the findings of a study of how members of a scholarly community (15 information behaviour researchers) constructed the meaning(s) and significance(s) of an author whose work is prominent in their field (Brenda Dervin). Its findings reveal the essentially social nature of participants' constructive processes. In shifting theoretical attention from individual cognition to social processes, the study seeks to address criticisms of prevailing approaches to information behaviour research voiced by critics such as Frohmann (1992), Talja (1997), and Julien (1999). In highlighting the social nature of participants' constructive processes, the paper both builds on and challenges prevailing conceptions of information behaviour.
Olsson, M.R. 2005, 'Meaning and authority: the social construction of an 'author' among information behaviour researchers', Information Research-An International Electronic Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 1-18.
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Introduction. The study explores the social processes that influence the construction by academic ( information behaviour) researchers of the meaning(s) and significance of an author and her work prominent in the literature of their field ( Brenda Dervin
Journal articles
Kennan, M. & Olsson, M.R. 2011, 'Writing It Up: Getting Your Lis Research Out There', Australian Academic and Research Libraries, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 14-27.
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This paper grew out of a presentation at the 'Research for US Practitioners Workshop' organised by the ALIA Research Committees and held at the State Library of New South Wales. The workshop was a satellite event of the Information Online Conference. The
Refereed conference papers
Olsson, M.R. 2011, 'Author-Constructs & Trojan horse-ing: Academic citation as a strategic discursive practice', ASSIST2011, New Orleans, USA, October 2011 in Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, ed NA, Wiley, USA, pp. 1-8.
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This paper draws on the findings of a study of 15 international information researchers' relationship with an author work prominent in the literature of their field (Brenda Dervin) to examine academic citation practices in a new light. Drawing on social constructivist theories, derived in part from Foucault's approach to discourse analysis, and a methodology drawing on aspects of Dervin's (1999) Sense-Making and Glaser & Strauss' (1967) inductive analytic techniques, it seeks to examine citation as a strategic discursive practice.
Olsson, M.R. 2010, 'All the World's a Stage: Making Sense of Shakespeare', American Society for Infomration Science and Technology, Pittsburgh, USA, October 2010 in Navigating Streams in an Information Ecosystem: Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh PA Oct 22-27, ed NA, American Society for Information Science and Technology, USA, pp. 1-10.
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This paper reports on the findings of a study examining how theatre professionals (actors, directors and others) make sense of the works of a culturally iconic author (William Shakespeare). The findings of the study are based on interviews with 35 theatre professionals in Canada, Finland and the UK. The study aims a more holistic approach to the study of information behaviour, one which acknowledges the complexity of sense-making as more than the problem-solving behaviour of individuals + as an embodied, social process, involving emotion as well as rationality. In doing so it draws on theoretical approaches from a range of different disciplines and traditions, including Dervin's Sense-Making, Foucault's discourse analysis and Derrida's deconstructionism.
Olsson, M.R. 2005, 'Beyond 'Needy' Individuals: Conceptualizing Information Behavior', Sparkling Synergies - Bringing Reserach and Practice Together, Charlotte, NC USA, October 2005 in Sparkling Synergies - Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, ed Grove, A, American Society for Information Science and Technology, Silver Spring Maryland USA, pp. 1-17.
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Understanding information users and their behavior is a question of central importance for information research and practice. The paper challenges several aspects of existing approaches to understanding information behaviour, including: the focus on individual cognition at the expense of social and affective factors; the construction of information users as defined by their areas of ignorance and uncertainty, rather than their expertise; and the focus on purposive rather than non-purposive information behavior. It argues that only by addressing these weaknesses and developing new research strategies and theoretical frameworks which focus attention on the social processes and relationships which underpin users information behavior can we hope to develop a truly holistic understanding of the relationship between people and information. It also argues that social constructivist approaches provide a theoretical lens through which information researchers can gain a clearer picture of information users not as needy individuals to be helped , but as social beings, experts in their own life-worlds.
Olsson, M.R. 2004, 'Understanding Users: Context Communication and Construction', Australian Library and Information Association Conference, Gold Coast, Australia, September 2004 in Challenging Ideas, ed Unknown, ALIA, online, pp. 1-9.
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Conference papers
Olsson, M.R. & Halbwirth, S.J. 2006, 'Working in Parallel: Themes in Knowledge Management', University of Greenwich,, July 2006 in The Third International Conference on Knowledge Management, ed Professor Suliman Hawamdeh, University of Greenwich, London UK, pp. 69-88.
Olsson, M.R. 2005, 'Sense-making Methodology', New York, USA, May 2005 in 2005 ICA Sense-making Workshop, ed n/a, n/a, http://communication.sbs.ohio-state/sense-making/meet/2005/meet/2005/meet05abs.html.
Olsson, M.R. 2005, 'Social sense-making - Constructing Shakespear: A potential application of sense-making methodology', ICA Sense-making workshop, New York, USA, May 2005 in 2005 ICA Sense-making workshop, ed n/a, n/a, http://communication.sbs.ohio-state/sense-making/meet/2005/meet/2005/meet05abs.html.
