AM25 Symposium: ASIST2025-Symposium Washington, DC, United States, November 15, 2025 |
| Conference website | https://www.asist.org/meetings-events/am/am25/exploring-information-as-potentiality-methods-for-design-and-evaluation-sig-use/ |
| Submission link | https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=am25symposia |
| Submission deadline | August 15, 2025 |
Call for Participation
"Exploring Information-as-Potentiality: Methods for Design and Evaluation" (SIG-USE)
A symposium co-located with ASIS&T 2025, Saturday, 15 November 2025, Washington, DC
Understanding how people interpret and use digital information is an essential part of building capable, 21st century knowledge systems. At the same time, information science/studies has called for attention to the mediating role that technology plays in informational processes. Both strands of thought converge on the need for new approaches that support inquiry into the dynamic modes of information-making and taking (Huvila, 2022) and their consequential relations within spaces of knowledge production.
In service towards the conference theme of ASIST 2025 “Difficult Conversations”, this half-day symposium will collectively explore and showcase methods, theories, techniques, metatheories, frameworks, and prototypes that conceptualize the use of information as a generative, unfolding set of practices - an approach we are calling information-as potentiality (Chassanoff and Chen, 2025). We suggest that approaches that frame information as situated (Suchman, 1987; Taylor, 1991;Bishop et al., 2000), experienced (Bruce et al., 2014; Chassanoff, 2016; Gorichanaz, 2019), participatory (Huvilla, 2008; Greyson, 2014), and/or embodied (Dourish, 2001; Chen, 2015; Olsson & Lloyd, 2017; Bates, 2018) practices are useful vantage points for observing dimensions of information use within larger systems of dynamic and mediated information flows. Such perspectives can offer valuable insights into evolving literacies, necessary contingencies, and possible affordances and can help inform the design and evaluation of capable knowledge infrastructures.
We seek participation from information science/studies researchers and practitioners interested in iterative, multidisciplinary perspectives on information use environments and its many generative forms and practices. We welcome contributions of short (3-5 pages, not including references) research papers to be presented in the first half of the symposia, with the goal of showcasing either completed research or sharing research-in-progress. Examples of topics that symposium presenters might address include:
- Experiential interfaces and/or navigation
- Designing for epistemic justice/awareness
- Information-as-capta
- Provenance-aware computing
- Situated and/or participatory action models
- Embodied and/or enacted information
HOW TO PARTICIPATE:
Register for the Conference and Symposium: https://www.asist.org/meetings-events/am/am25/
Submit a Short Research Paper: Symposium participants are invited to submit a short research paper (3-5 pages max, not including references). Participants will present 10 minute talks describing, sharing or envisioning how particular approaches to information use provide opportunities for addressing research problems. While we welcome submissions that reflect actively "in progress" research, we also encourage participants to submit papers that identify a research area or problem, its empirical consequences, and potential pathways to explore for moving forward. [Link for Submissions: TBA]
Review and Notification: All submissions will be peer-reviewed by symposium organizers and evaluated based on two main criteria: a) significance of submission topic to the goals and objectives of the symposium and b) clarity and description of the research problem and (where applicable) proposed solutions.
IMPORTANT DATES
Short Research Papers due: July 15th, 2025
Notifications: August 14th, 2025
SYMPOSIUM AGENDA
We plan to draw on our previous experiences collaborating as organizers for an ASIST 2023 workshop, “Exploring Collaborative Interpretive Practice,” (https://collab-interpret.github.io/) to facilitate a session that: a) presents opportunities for exploring empirical approaches to different kinds of interpretive inquiry; b) encourages active participation in presentation content by incorporating discussion and reflection; c) promotes synergistic, transdisciplinary perspectives for post-symposium research collaborations.
We have purposefully threaded reflection components throughout the symposium in efforts to facilitate future conversations and collaborative opportunities. These may include: proposing a special issue for JASIST or Information Matters and other collaborative research projects. Below, we describe our preliminary schedule and outline key activities.
SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE
|
Introduction |
1:00 – 1:10pm Welcome and overview (20 mins.) |
|
Short Research Papers; Discussion and Reflection |
1:20 – 2:30pm Short Research Papers (70 mins.) 2:30 – 3:15pm Discussion and Reflections (45 mins.) |
|
BREAK |
3:15 – 3:30pm COFFEE BREAK |
|
Design & Evaluation Breakouts; Discussion and Reflection |
3:30 – 3:40pm Introduction (10 mins.) 3:40 – 4:30pm Design/Evaluation Breakouts (50 mins.) 4:30 – 5:00pm Discussion and Reflections (30 mins.) |
SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZERS
|
Alexandra Chassanoff |
University of North Carolina | achass@unc.edu |
|
Annie T. Chen |
University of Washington | atchen@uw.edu |
|
Isto Huvila |
Uppsala University | isto.huvila@abm.uu.se |
|
Zack Lischer-Katz |
University of Arizona | zlkatz@arizona.edu |
|
Travis Wagner |
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | wagnert@illinois.edu |