Roger Chabot
Roger Chabot (Kelsang Legden) is a library professional at Western Libraries and a part-time instructor for Western University’s Faculty of Information and Media Studies. His scholarship, in the largest sense, involves LIS and its intersections with the philosophically profound, the personally meaningful, and the transcendent. More specifically, he is interested in applying Buddhism’s “Four Seals” to both inform and critique issues and topics within LIS and inversely, to apply LIS theory and philosophy to understand the informational nature of Buddhist practice.
I am fascinated with being in an existential sense and how it relates to information. I have been moved for many years by Batchelor’s (1983) statement “Our very being becomes a question for us.” It compels me to investigate the question of being as it appears as profound philosophical or spiritual questions and subsequently their potential resolution through information. It also invites me to investigate at an existential level as to how information is used, is learned, becomes a part of us, and transforms us in everyday life. It elicits for me the questions, what is the difference between being and information? Am I what I perceive, know, and understand? And, extending beyond myself and looking to others, how do I help others investigate their being? How do I help others to transform as I have been transformed?
— Roger
Tim Gorichanaz
Tim Gorichanaz is Assistant Teaching Professor in the College of Computing & Informatics at Drexel University. He teaches broadly across the library and information science and human–computer interaction programs, particularly in ethics and design. Tim’s research explores information experience, ethics and design, particularly in the domain of personally meaningful activities. He also writes fiction, runs long distances and practices classical guitar.
We use information for thinking. And as information changes, so does our thinking. The digital age has sprouted new forms of information, manifesting in new technologies and experiences. Has this changed what we think about? Has it changed the way we think? How might we think better? And could we, perhaps, use our better thinking to design a better world?
— Tim
Jenna Hartel
Jenna Hartel’s scholarly career is motivated by the question: What is the nature of information in the pleasures of life? To that end, she explores “the red thread of information” within leisure realms. Her work aims to be an imaginative, energetic, and committed form of intervention in the field of Library and Information Science. She believes a different character of LIS is possible, one that moves beyond pragmatic concerns with information resources and technologies to consider positive and upbeat information phenomena across the entire human experience.
I am coming to terms with the idea that my consciousness is always entirely free. Nothing outside of myself can determine my thoughts, feelings, and reaction to the world. What, then, stands in my way to feeling joy as often as possible and to expressing love towards everyone and everything? Put differently: Are circumstances more powerful than my mind and spirit? Each moment is an opportunity to discover an answer…
— Jenna
Kiersten F. Latham
Kiersten F. Latham is endlessly fascinated with the way humans interact with their physical environment. Her specific research has explored this relationship holistically within cultural institutions, particularly museums. Underlying these pursuits are three deeply embedded fascinations—beauty, freedom, and personhood–across which, she intentionally applies both appreciative and systems lenses. In her day job (😃), she is the Director of the Arts, Cultural Management & Museum Studies program at Michigan State University where she also tries to imbue the knowledge that emerges from this research.
In the past few years, I have taken a deeper turn into the notion of spirituality and the ways a broader conception of it―as a deep sense of aliveness and interconnectedness―might manifest across humanity. Like creativity, I wonder whether our spiritual inclinations are one of the few things that truly makes us human. I often sit on my deck in the countryside of southern Michigan, listening to the birds, frogs, and trees that surround me, trying to hear what they might be telling me about these matters. For most of my adult life I have practiced hatha yoga but have recently begun a deeper exploration of yoga philosophy and practice (Samkhya) which also nourishes this exploration. Also, I love polka dots.
— Kiersten
Hugh Samson
Hugh Samson is a PhD student in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University. His research explores the integration of contemplative initiatives, programs, services, spaces, and technologies within information environments. His Master’s thesis, Contemplating Infrastructure: An Ethnographic Study of the University of Toronto Faculty of Information Inforum’s iRelax Mindfulness Resource Area, introduces the term contemplative infrastructure to refer to infrastructure that is concerned with the contemplative dimensions of life (Samson, 2021). Hugh is the administrator and a founding member of the Information and Contemplation Salon.
I am curious to understand what conditions, structural and otherwise, contribute to the development of intentional, meaningful, and reflective thought and activity? How might these conditions be extended and leveraged to promote yet further reflective thought and activity? What role does infrastructure perform in the maintenance and advancement of contemplative balance and wellbeing? What is the nature of contemplative infrastructure, and what are its aesthetic, informational, organizational, and spatial dimensions?
— Hugh
Lucas Almeida Serafim
I majored in Librarianship as an undergraduate in Brazil (2000-2004). I then worked as an Academic Librarian from 2005 to 2009 and pursued a Master’s and Ph.D. in Information Science at the Federal University of Paraíba from 2009 to 2016. Currently I work as a Professor at the Federal University of Cariri (2009 – present), State of Ceará, in northeastern Brazil. I am curious to better understand the role of information in social practices, especially those that are undertheorized or typically described in negative terms. In so doing, it is interesting to explore information beyond its conventional documentary dimensions and to consider its embodied, emotional, pleasurable, profound, situated, and subjective aspects. During my doctoral studies, which examined information literacy within an amateur competitive bodybuilding community, I first met Professor Jenna Hartel, who encouraged me to consider these alternative aspects of information as well as topics and techniques such as positive information science, ethnographic and visual methods, and contemplative practices. Our academic partnership continues to inspire research in Brazil in the form of The Pleasurable and Profound Sides of Information Research Group (2019 – present) and the iSquare Interdisciplinary Study (2019 – present). Since 2019 I participate in the Information and Contemplation Salon, where I have the opportunity to view our informational world through a contemplative lens along with various American and Canadian researchers and practitioners.
How can I improve upon my holistic informational vision of the world that we live in? How can I share it? How can information help us to be better persons and to put into practice our social responsibilities (as professionals) by exploring and discovering the deeper and higher things in life?
— Lucas
Hailey Siracky
Hailey Siracky is a librarian at MacEwan University in Edmonton, AB., Canada. Before working in libraries, she spent three years in monastic formation in a Cistercian monastery in rural Massachusetts, which informs her interest in contemplative practice, inquiry, and pedagogy. As a graduate student at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information, she researched the practice of spiritual journal keeping among Catholic young adults, and continues to be interested in how the search for spiritual growth is represented in personal documents. When she is not working, she is most often reading & writing poetry, making something with her hands, or spending time with her pitbull mix, Jill.
Whether I am studying personal documents, writing poetry, teaching, or engaging in creative projects, I am motivated by the desire to communicate my experience of the world and connect with other people. Wherever I go, I arrive there seeking ways to be my truest self; where I can ask big questions, create things, and be more courageous and honest in my relationships, both within and outside of my career. At their best, both information studies and contemplative practice give me the tools and language for this search, allowing and encouraging me to invite others along.
— Hailey
Beck Tench
Beck Tench is a wife, daughter, friend, teacher, gardener, cyclist, kind stranger, and PhD student at the University of Washington Information School. She researches how the design of physical and digital spaces cultivates contemplative experience and practice. She is particularly interested in understanding how space facilitates a greater capacity for accessing personal wisdom, connecting with others through compassion and friendship, improving the quality of our lives through greater awareness of life as we’re living it, and coping with the distractions of digital culture.
My scholarly work began as and continues to be a spiritual journey. As best I can tell, it is a journey to find the answer to questions I’d no doubt pursue with or without having chosen the academic path. While it may not be obvious on the surface, the questions that animate my work are: (1) Who am I, really? (2) How do I love? And (3) What am I here for? (To be fair, I think the answer to this last question may be to ask the first two.)
— Beck