Ronald Day

My research is on the philosophy, history, politics, and culture of information, documentation, and knowledge, particularly in the 20th and into the 21st centuries.

The approach that I take is that of Critical Information Studies. In this approach I use philosophical, historical, and rhetorical analyses to examine the traditions of Western Documentation, Library and Information Science, and Information Science, and the conceptualization of information and functions of information technologies in these fields and in popular culture.

Along with many articles and book chapters, I have written Documentarity: Evidence, Ontology, and Inscription (MIT Press, 2019), Indexing it All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data (MIT Press, 2014; ASIS&T’s Best Information Science Book for 2015) and The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power (Southern Illinois University Press, 2001). I co-translated into English and co-edited the mid-twentieth century French documentalist Suzanne Briet's book,What is Documentation? (Scarecrow Press, 2006). And with Claire McInerney I co-edited the book Rethinking Knowledge Management: From Knowledge Objects to Knowledge Processes (Springer, 2007). Recently, my earliest writings have been published as Ronald E. Day: Foundational Writings (Library Juice Press, 2024). Currently, I am completing a book that culminates the project of deconstructing the traditional concept of information, which I began in my earliest writings and have continued throughout my career, and this will be published by MIT Press in late 2025 or 2026.

• Doctor of Philosophy at State University of New York - Binghamton, 1990

• Computer Mediated Communication and Social Media
• Critical algorithm theory
• Data Science @Luddy
• Ethics and Values in Digital Society
• Information and Library Science
• Infrastructure Studies
• Intellectual Freedom and information/data ethics
• Knowledge Organization, Cultural Informatics, and Natural Informatics
• Media Studies
• Social Informatics
• Theory and history of documentation and library and information science