Interdisciplinary research and information overload - Navigating Among the Disciplines: The Library and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Library Trends, Fall, 1996 by Patrick Wilson

Abstract

INFORMATION OVERLOAD IS A PROBLEM for all those involved in research but seems especially threatening to interdisciplinary research. Teamwork supplies the remedy, but most research in the social sciences and humanities is done by scholars working alone. That fact limits the scope for interdisciplinary work. In this article, we examine several ways in which actual and potential overload affects research choices for the solo researcher, paying special attention to the creation of ad hoc idiosyncratic specialties. As a matter of policy, should solo interdisciplinary work be encouraged? A strong social preference for interdisciplinarity might discourage solo practice as just another example of the huge disparity between individual and collective capacities.

Type Of Overload

Everyone engaged in research is aware of the problem of information overload. It is always a threat if not a reality. It is perhaps most familiar as a problem of maintaining currency. A basic requirement for the maintenance of expertise, and of a reputation for expertise, is that of staying current - i.e., keeping up with what other research workers are doing that is relevant to one's own work (Wilson, 1993). One wants to be able to claim intellectual command of a field, and this requires deep and wide knowledge of what has been done and is being done by others in the field. Just how wide and how deep one's knowledge must be is not something on which there are (or could be) any precise rules, and it is very clear that wide differences in the scope of current knowledge will be found among different people working in the same area. But the requirement is there and ordinarily means that one must devote time and effort to reading what others have published or are going to publish or have otherwise communicated. How much time is needed will vary with the size and level of activity of the field - a small field of slow producers will present no problem of keeping up; a large and very active field of fast producers may tax or overwhelm one's capacities. Specialization in research is partly a response to, and defense against, overload - i.e., one adjust the size of the field over which one hopes to maintain expertise so that the burden of keeping up is manageable. The field cannot any longer be the size of a conventionally recognized discipline, even in philosophy, not an especially populous discipline, it has long been impossible for American philosophers to keep up with what their colleagues were writing, says Nicholas Rescher (1993) and philosophy which ought by mission and is by tradition an integration of knowledge, has itself become increasingly disintegrated" (p. 730). As time goes on, one may discover the necessity of narrowing one's scope: Every scientist who has been in business for a long period knows perfectly well that in order to remain an expert in some area he has to cut down the width of his interests more or less continuously" (Bar-Hillel, 1963, p. 96). This is by no means the only thing that limits the size of an individual researcher's area of expertise, but limiting width of interest is definitely unavoidable and increasingly important.

A different problem of overload arises in the context of particular inquiries or research projects. Here the problem is the overabundance of available data relevant to the particular inquiry - i.e., experimental results, field observations, historical records, statistical and survey data, and the like. Data may be scanty in one case but torrential in another to the point that no one could hope to analyze and evaluate them all or integrate them into a coherent picture, even supposing that there were no problems of locating and assembling them in the first place (Wilson, 1994). The kind of overload involved in maintaining currency we might call "upkeep" overload-the price of maintaining the intellectual capital that is the research worker's chief asset., the kind of overload presented by information relevant to a particular inquiry we might call "task" over load (the two kinds will frequently overlap).

In both cases there are a variety of ways of coping with overload. A certain amount of upkeep overload may be accepted as normal, though inevitably leading to nonuse of relevant, but less than top-priority, information. Task overload can be dealt with by the adoption of strategies of inquiry that allow the elimination or ignoring of huge categories of relevant information (Wilson, 1995). In both cases, one consequence of overload is that relevant information does not get used. Whether or not this is a problem, it does seem a clear failure to meet conventional standards of rationality, which call for the use of all available relevant information. The conventional understanding is reflected in statements like: "These estimates are rational, in the sense of taking account of all available information" (Elster, 1989, p. 109) or: "The common understanding [of the term 'rationality'] is...the complete exploitation of information, sound reasoning, and so forth" (Arrow, 1987, p. 206). So overload is of theoretical, as well as of practical, interest; one cannot simply disregard the fact of large-scale ignoring of relevant information if that is what happens in research. Of course it is of both practical and theoretical interest to library and information studies, where the chief criterion of success in information retrieval has been the provision of all and only relevant information, a goal that loses some of its allure in the face of persistent problems of overload.