About us

The Austrian Society for Documentation and Information (OeGDI)

The Austrian Society for Documentation and Information was founded in 1951 with the aim to assist the establishment of documentation and information centers, and to foster national and international co-operation and networking.

Although the OeGDI today still represents information and documentation professionals in libraries, archives, museums and documentation centers, it also tries to meet the needs of recent developments in the field:
On the one hand more and more institutions have cut back their posts for information and documentation – which is why fewer and fewer professionals are occupied there. On the other hand this decline has been compensated by other forms of engagement in the area: There are initiatives by laypersons for building databases (such as the Hypertext-Documentations HyperBourdieu, Hypergeertz or HyperElias) as well as efforts by university lecturers to cover matters of information and documentation in their courses in scientific working skills, science studies, propaedeutics for doctoral students et cetera and to support and encourage students who want to write their final papers on subjects such as information ethics, scientific/scholarly communication, qualitative or quantitative evaluation methods and so on..

Our Society is a player in developing new policies for the “information society” and in lobbying for its members. All members are participating in OeGDI activities honorarily and independently from their main occupation. We organize various technical committees (“Fachausschüsse”), especially for information ethics and scientific integrity and for data and information visualisation, lectures, Young Researchers’ Workshops, and conferences jointly with other scientific societies, concerning topics as open access, big data, or (political / social) bots. Last but not least, we fund and promote projects in this interdisciplinary field.

Our most important collaboration partner is the German DGI, the German Society for Information and Knowledge. We are a member of the Federation of Austrian Scientific Societies, the VWGÖ. The OeGDI has signed DORA, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment and invites all members and friends of OeGDI to sign this declaration.

To give a small glimpse of the topics that ÖGDI-members are engaged with, here is a list of some publications in English (German ones are found here):

Anton Tantner

  • Tantner, Anton (2009): Addressing the Houses. The Introduction of House Numbering in Europe, in: Histoire & Mesure, 24(2), 7-30.
  • Rose-Redwood, Reuben/Tantner, Anton (2012): Introduction: governmentality, house numbering and the spatial history of the modern city, in: Urban History, 39 (4), 607-613.
  • Rose-Redwood, Reuben/Tantner, Anton (eds., 2012)): History of Urban House Numbering, Special section of Urban History  39 (4), November 2012
  • Tantner, Anton (2015):  House Numbers. Pictures of a Forgotten History. London: Reaktion Books

Christian Schlögl

  • Gorraiz, Juan & Gumpenberger, Christian & Schloegl, Christian. (2014). Usage versus citation behaviours in four subject areas. Scientometrics. 101. 10.1007/s11192-014-1271-1.
  • Schloegl, Christian & Gorraiz, Juan & Gumpenberger, Christian & Jack, Kris & Kraker, Peter. (2014). Comparison of downloads, citations and readership data for two information systems journals. Scientometrics. 101. 10.1007/s11192-014-1365-9.

Terje Tüür-Fröhlich

Lecture, Conference Science and Technology Studies (STS Italia)

  • Tüür–Fröhlich, Terje: “Female academics – symbolic domination by numbers. Commercial citation indexing discriminates female academics with non-ASCII names.” 6th STS Italia conference – sociotechnical environments, Trento (Italien), 25.11.2016

Gerhard Fröhlich

  • Interview (2011) with Prof. Dr. Gerhard Fröhlich on the Schön Scandal: “Self control mechanisms are a myth in science to avoid any serious external control” JUnQ – Journal of Unsolved Questions 1 (2), ISSN 2192-0745, XII-XIII; via: http://sammelpunkt.philo.at/2420/
  • Mörth, Ingo/Fröhlich, Gerhard: HyperGeertzWorldCatalogueHTM. A comprehensive, contextual and referential bibliography and mediagraphy of all works and public statements by Clifford Geertz: http://HyperGeertz.jku.at (ongoing project)
  • Mörth, Ingo/Fröhlich, Gerhard: HyperBourdieu© WorldCatalogue HTM. A comprehensive, contextual and referential bibliography and mediagraphy of his works and public statements: http://HyperBourdieu.jku.at (ongoing project)
  • Mörth, Ingo/Fröhlich, Gerhard (Höbart, Werner/Pellosch, Michael) (2002ff.): HyperEliasWorldCatalogueHTM.  A comprehensive, contextual and referential bibliography and mediagraphy of his works and public statements & Documentation of Secondary Literature: http://HyperElias.jku.at (ongoing project)

Michael Strähle

  • Jørgensen, MS: Hall, I; Hall, D; Gnaiger, A; Schroffenegger, G; Brodersen, S; von der Heiden, K; Reimer, R; Strähle, M; Urban, C; Endler, W; Teodosiu, C; Rojo, T & Leydesdorff, L 2004, Democratic Governance through Interaction between NGO’s, Universities and Science Shops: Experiences, Expectations, Recommendations. Final report of Interacts, ISBN 87-91035-26-0.
  • Khan, Shumaisa & Timotijevic, Lada & Newton, Rachel & Coutinho, Daniela & Llerena Ruis, José Luis & Ortega, Santiago & Benighaus, Ludger & Hofmaier, Christian & Xhaferri, Zamira & de Boer, Alie & Urban, Christine & Strähle, Michael & Da Pos, Lara & Neresini, Federico & Raats, Monique & Hadwiger, Klaus. (2016). The framing of innovation among European research funding actors: Assessing the potential for ‘responsible research and innovation’ in the food and health domain. Food Policy. 62. 78-87. 10.1016/j.foodpol.2016.04.004.