Peter Lyman
Encyclopedia
George Peter Lyman was an American
professor of information science
who taught at the University of California, Berkeley
School of Information
, and was well known in U.S. academia for his research on online information and his leadership in remaking university library systems for the digital era.
. He received his BA from Stanford University
in Philosophy, his MA from Berkeley in Political Science, and his PhD in Political Science from Stanford. He taught Political Theory at Michigan State University, where he was one of the founders of James Madison College
, a residential college with a public policy focus; at Michigan State he was also the Assistant Director of Academic Computing. He joined the University of Southern California where he became Dean of the University Libraries. He left USC in 1994 to take the position of University Librarian at the University of California, Berkeley, with a simultaneous appointment in the School of Library and Information Studies (which shortly thereafter became the School of Information Management and Systems [SIMS], now the UC Berkeley School of Information). In 1998, he became a full-time Professor in SIMS, where he taught and conducted research until ailing health resulted in his retirement in 2006. He died in July 2007.
In 2005, Lyman became the director of the Digital Youth Project, formally known as "Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures," a three year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives. Prior to that, he conducted a widely cited study tracking how much information is created each year, "How Much Information?",
Lyman also contributed to fields outside of information studies. One of his most reprinted articles is "The Fraternal Bond as Joking Relationship: A case study of the role of sexist jokes in male group bonding," an analysis of the role humor plays in men's relationships. He was also an active faculty member at UC Berkeley's Center for New Media.
The diversity and range of his academic interests were not only reflected in his publications but also in his teaching. While at UC Berkeley, he taught or co-taught courses in: Information Policy, Analysis of Information in Organizations, Copyright Law and Policy, New Media, and Qualitative Methods, one of his primary academic passions.
In addition to his teaching and research, Lyman worked as an advisor to a wide range of organizations. He was on the boards of Sage Publications
, EDUCOM, the Research Libraries Group
, the Charles Babbage Institute
, the Commission on Preservation and Access, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and the Internet Archive
.
Lyman and his longtime spouse Dr. Barrie Thorne
(professor of Gender and Women's Studies, and Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) raised two children - Andrew Thorne-Lyman, an expert on nutrition employed by the World Food Programme in Rome; and Abigail Thorne-Lyman, a city planner in Berkeley.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
professor of information science
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
who taught at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
School of Information
UC Berkeley School of Information
The UC Berkeley School of Information or the iSchool is a graduate school offering both a professional master's degree and a research-oriented Ph.D. degree at the University of California, Berkeley. The school was created in 1994 and was known as the School of Information Management and Systems ...
, and was well known in U.S. academia for his research on online information and his leadership in remaking university library systems for the digital era.
Life
Lyman was a well-known figure in the fields of information and library science in his capacity as researcher and as university librarian for the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. He received his BA from Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in Philosophy, his MA from Berkeley in Political Science, and his PhD in Political Science from Stanford. He taught Political Theory at Michigan State University, where he was one of the founders of James Madison College
James Madison College
This article is about the public-policy college at Michigan State University. For the similarly named institution in Virginia, see James Madison University....
, a residential college with a public policy focus; at Michigan State he was also the Assistant Director of Academic Computing. He joined the University of Southern California where he became Dean of the University Libraries. He left USC in 1994 to take the position of University Librarian at the University of California, Berkeley, with a simultaneous appointment in the School of Library and Information Studies (which shortly thereafter became the School of Information Management and Systems [SIMS], now the UC Berkeley School of Information). In 1998, he became a full-time Professor in SIMS, where he taught and conducted research until ailing health resulted in his retirement in 2006. He died in July 2007.
In 2005, Lyman became the director of the Digital Youth Project, formally known as "Kids' Informal Learning with Digital Media: An Ethnographic Investigation of Innovative Knowledge Cultures," a three year collaborative project funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Carried out by researchers at University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley, the project explores how kids use digital media in their everyday lives. Prior to that, he conducted a widely cited study tracking how much information is created each year, "How Much Information?",
Lyman also contributed to fields outside of information studies. One of his most reprinted articles is "The Fraternal Bond as Joking Relationship: A case study of the role of sexist jokes in male group bonding," an analysis of the role humor plays in men's relationships. He was also an active faculty member at UC Berkeley's Center for New Media.
The diversity and range of his academic interests were not only reflected in his publications but also in his teaching. While at UC Berkeley, he taught or co-taught courses in: Information Policy, Analysis of Information in Organizations, Copyright Law and Policy, New Media, and Qualitative Methods, one of his primary academic passions.
In addition to his teaching and research, Lyman worked as an advisor to a wide range of organizations. He was on the boards of Sage Publications
SAGE Publications
SAGE is an independent academic publisher of books, journals, and electronic products in the humanities and social sciences and the scientific, technical, and medical fields. SAGE was founded in 1965 by George McCune and Sara Miller McCune. The company is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California,...
, EDUCOM, the Research Libraries Group
Research Libraries Group
The Research Libraries Group was a U.S.-based library consortium which developed the Eureka interlibrary search engine, the RedLightGreen database of bibliographic descriptions and ArchiveGrid, a database containing descriptions of archival collections...
, the Charles Babbage Institute
Charles Babbage Institute
The Charles Babbage Institute is a research center at the University of Minnesota specializing in the history of information technology, particularly the history since 1935 of digital computing, programming/software, and computer networking....
, the Commission on Preservation and Access, the Council on Library and Information Resources, and the Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
.
Lyman and his longtime spouse Dr. Barrie Thorne
Barrie Thorne
Barrie Thorne is a Professor of Sociology and of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.Her work focuses on the sociology of gender, feminist theory, the sociology of age relations, childhood, and families, and ethnographic methods...
(professor of Gender and Women's Studies, and Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley) raised two children - Andrew Thorne-Lyman, an expert on nutrition employed by the World Food Programme in Rome; and Abigail Thorne-Lyman, a city planner in Berkeley.
Publications
- "Liberal Education in Cyberia." Education and Democracy: Re-imagining Liberal Learning in America. New York: The College Board, 1997. pp. 299-319. A paper on the impact of information technology on pragmatic liberal education, commissioned by The College Board.
- "Is Using a Computer Like Driving a Car, Reading a Book, or solving a Problem? The Computer as Machine, Text and Culture." in Work and Technology in Higher Education, edited by Mark Shields (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 1995). A paper on the links between computer work and the American tradition of invention and "tinkering." (see also shorter version: "Computing as Performance Art" Educom Review, Vol. 30, No. 4, July/August 1995.)
- "Digital Documents and the Future of the Academic Community." In Technology and Scholarly Communication. Edited by Quandt, Richard Emeric and Richard Ekman. University of California Press, 1999. (see also: Proceedings from the Conference on Scholarly Communication and Technology, University of California Press, 1997. Abstract and full text. A paper commissioned by the Mellon Foundation for a conference on Scholarly Publishing, concerning the implications of digital publishing for the academic sense of community).
- "How is the Medium the Message? Notes on the Design of Network Communication." Computer Networking and Scholarship in the 21st Century University. Edited by T. Harrison and T. Stephen. SUNY Press, .
- "What is a Digital Library? Technology, Intellectual Property and the Public Interest." Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Book, Bricks, and Bytes. Fall 1996, Vol. 125, No. 4, pgs. 1-33.
- "Archiving Digital Cultural Artifacts: Organizing an Agenda for Action" by Peter Lyman and Brewster Kahle, Alexa Internet, for D-Lib Magazine.
- __ and Howard Besser. "Defining the Problem of Our Vanishing Memory: Background, Current Status, Models for Resolution." In Time and Bits: Managing Digital Continuity, edited by Margaret MacLean and Ben H. Davis. Los Angeles: Getty Information Institute and Getty Conservation Institute, 1998.
- "The UCC 2-B Debate and the Sociology of the Information Age." Berkeley Technology Law Journal.
- "Risk, tribe and lore: New Paths to Post-Baccalaureate Learning in Digital Libraries" (Aspen Institute Conference on Post-Baccalaureate Learning, November 7, 1998, co-sponsored by the University Continuing Education Association and the Council of Graduate Schools).
- "The Poetics of the Future: Information Highways, Virtual Communities and Digital Libraries." The Lazerow Lecture, School of Library and Information Sciences, UCLA. (November 18, 1998)
- "The Responsibilities of Universities in the New Information Environment," and "The Future of Scholarly Communication" by Peter Lyman and Stanley Chodorow, in The Mirage of Continuity: Reconfiguring Academic Information Resources for the 21st Century. CLIR and AAU: Washington D.C., 1998.
- "Designing Libraries to be Learning Communities: Toward an Ecology of Places for Learning." For the June 1998 meeting of UKOLN.
- "Archiving the World Wide Web." In Building a National Strategy for Preservation: Issues in Digital Media Archiving. Council on Library and Information Resources and the Library of Congress, April 2002.
- Looney, Michael and Peter Lyman. "Portals in Higher Education." EDUCAUSE, July/August 2000.
- Copyright and Fair Use in the Digital Age: Q & A with Peter Lyman, Educom Review, Vol. 30, No. 1, p32-35, Jan/Feb 1995.
- __ and Hal Varian. "The Democratization of Data." Harvard Business Review. Vol. 79, No. 1, p137-139, January 2001.
- __ and N. Wakeford. "Going into the (Virtual) Field." American Behavioral Scientist. Vol. 43, No. 3, p359-376. November/December 1999.
- "Access is the Killer Application." Journal of Academic LibrarianshipJournal of Academic LibrarianshipThe Journal of Academic Librarianship is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers a broad range of topics that deal with academic libraries. The editor is David Kohl. The journal publishes book reviews, analytical articles, and bibliographic essays...
. Vol. 22, No. 5, p371-375. September 1996. - "Invention, the Mother of Necessity - Archival Research in 2020." American Archivist. Vol. 57, No. 1, p114-125. Winter 1994.
- "The Politics of Anger - On Silence, Ressentiment, and Political Speech." Socialist Review. Vol. 57, p55-74. 1981.
- "A China Journal." Socialist Review. Vol. 54, p55-70. 1980.
- "The fraternal bond as a joking relationship. A case study of the role of sexist jokes in male group bonding", in Kimmel, M.S. (Eds),Changing Men. New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA, pp.148-63, 1987.