Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology
School of Information Technology
Department of Information Science
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Research on education and educators in the Cape Slave Lodge during the 18th century has led to the preparation of an exhibition in the Iziko Museum in Cape Town
Contact person: Prof AL Dick.
The Department of Information Science is co-ordinating an interdisciplinary research project involving this Department, the Department for Education Innovation, the Department of Humanities Education and the Library to innovate the curriculum Information Literacy. This project has created: (1) a stimulus for research, because of the new possibilities in the different fields of research (postgraduate students are also attracted to do further research); (2) an enhanced creativity as the project empowers lecturers / graphic designers / professional staff of the departments to think outside the box and to develop and create new teaching and learning materials; (3) a positive staff morale and intrinsic motivation; and (4) a lecturer’s toolkit to assist in creating learning activities that supplements the prescribed book and enhances student learning. In addition, two conference presentations followed a joint UNESCO funded project initiated by the Department of Informatics on ICT and information literacy training for teachers from developing South African communities.
Contact person: Prof A-L de Boer.
Researchers in the Department completed the IFLA World Report 2010 that provides an overview of issues related to freedom of access to information and freedom of expression. The publication was designed by the researchers as an interactive, web-based publication and was launched at the IFLA conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, in August 2010. Interactive electronic publication: http://www.ifla.org/en/publications/iflafaife-world-report-series
Contact person: Prof TJD Bothma.
Contributions were made to the first edition of the prestigious Oxford Companion to the Book, a unique reference work that contains entries by 400 of the world's best scholars in book history
Contact person: Prof AL Dick.
In publishing studies research, book history is becoming a focus area. Research was done on the history of children's literature publishing in English in South Africa between 1900 and 1961, and on the peer review practices of local scholarly publishers during the 20th century. An international project which was launched in 2010 focuses on migration, identity and printing skills transfer across the English world.
Contact person: Ms EH Le Roux.
Research on information behaviour in various contexts where continued including cancer, palliative care, and veterinary science. The multiplicity of contexts in palliative care, paradigm shifts in information behaviour and the contribution of models and theories of information to address concerns on cancer, culture and literacy were also considered.
Contact person: Prof I Fourie.
In collaboration with French colleagues in Paris research is done on the following three projects: The first project, A polemology of the spirit, has as ultimate objective: reinventing human spirituality as socio-therapeutic solution for contemporary societies that suffer from a loss of spirituality. This relates closely to the therapeutic possibilities of, A theory of plasticity, the second project, with its focus on form which clearly links with in-form-ation and in-form-atisation, The third project, The ethos-analysis of knowledge as a territory of meaning, supports the previous two in a substantially therapeutic way. Knowledge Management research, relating to these three projects, focuses on ‘the ecology of knowledge’ and ‘the ethics of thought and knowledge’.
Contact person: Prof CS De Beer.
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