Two psychologists in search of a school of information: a personal journey

Having followed a path from the outside in the University of Michigan‘s School of Information, the authors have a broad vision of the school‘s intellectual agenda and the relevance of different conceptual and methodological approaches. As they write in this article, they find it enormously attractive that the school is populated by students and faculty with backgrounds in the humanities, the social sciences, the natural sciences and the computational sciences. As their own work evolved to focus on how people use information systems in real work settings, they found it necessary to be eclectic in the ideas and research methods they used. They value being in a school where disciplinary heterogenity is the norm rather than the exception. They like being part of a school where people and their activities are at the center of the study of information systems.