Birger Hjørland (born January 1, 1947, in
Denmark
Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...
) is a professor of
knowledge organization at the
Royal School of Library and Information Science (RSLIS) in Copenhagen.
His main areas of study pertain to theory of library and information science and of knowledge organization. Hjørland has contributed important developments to
domain analysis and concept theory. He has been cited as an anchor of North American knowledge organization studies, as well as an information science pioneer.
Birger Hjørland started working at the RSLIS in 1976, then became a research librarian at
The Royal Library in Copenhagen from 1978 to 1990.
From 1990 he returned to RSLIS and became professor in 2001. He has done research and taught at RSLIS ever since. Many of his students have become research librarians or
information specialists. He is a member of the editorial board of various journals and the editor-in-chief of the ''ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization''.
Scientific work
Hjørland has emphasized in many papers that any work in library and information science cannot be "atheoretical", but should be based explicitly on some theoretical approach. He has classified four main approaches to LIS: empiricist, rationalistic, historical-hermeneutical and pragmatical, the last two of which he considers to be more valuable.
Domain analysis and concept theory
Hjørland's
domain analysis is an attempt at a comprehensive theory that can be applied to
information science. Its main premise is a set of analytical tools that can be applied in subsets or as a whole to in order to study the effects of different social, epistemological, and cultural fields on the theories of information science. Thus organization is applied in relation to the different domains from which it emanates and is consumed. Rather than studying the user in this case, the domain or environment is the main focus of the theory. Individuals are seen as members of distinct cultures or domains and their subsequent document systems.
Similar to domain analysis, concept theory aims to create a theory of concepts which may be applied to knowledge organization systems by analyzing conceptual semantic relationships. Different theories of concepts, i.e., how users interact with information, shape interaction with information in three specific aspects: bibliometrics, information literacy, and knowledge organization. This theory indicates that concepts are definitions of the world created according to one's inclinations and ideas; they cannot exist in isolation from the interests that created them. Hjørland argues that the theory is best understood through historicists and pragmatic interpretations, i.e., cultural (historical) influences on concepts best describe their meaning as well as pragmatic changes to concepts to allow humans to adapt and change certain concepts. Thus, concepts evolve with human practices.
Hjørland's work has been classified as
social constructivism
Social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge according to which human development is socially situated, and knowledge is constructed through interaction with others. Like social constructionism, social constructivism states that ...
. Indeed, he cites own work in domain analysis as "socio-cognitive", that is, the study of the effects of a culture on individuals, and their information artifacts.
Wikipedia
In recent years, Hjørland has done research on Wikipedia as a part of establishing an information science-grounded kind of
source criticism. He has written research articles about the
reliability of Wikipedia. In one of them, he compares a Wikipedia article about a
breast cancer
Breast cancer is a cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a Breast lump, lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, Milk-rejection sign, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipp ...
controversy to an article in
Encyclopædia Britannica
The is a general knowledge, general-knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The 2010 version of the 15th edition, ...
and two Danish encyclopedias.
[Birger Hjørland: Evaluation of an Information Source Illustrated by a Case Study : Effect of Screening for Breast Cancer. In: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2011. http://pure.iva.dk/da/publications/evaluation-of-an-information-source-illustrated-by-a-case-study%283083575c-93e5-4e7e-b71d-2e3beb82f406%29.html ] As a part of the research, Hjørland has edited Wikipedia himself, making contributions to several articles related to information science.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hjorland, Birger
1947 births
Living people
21st-century Danish scientists
Information scientists