With the discussions about annotated bibliographies, reference lists, and
exchange of references - I'm wondering whose concerns we are trying to
resolve?  Ken Friedman is advocating Victor Margolin's interest in seeing
the development of annotated literature sets for different design contexts.
This could be considered an exercise in disciplinary development - and it
would be a useful one for graduate students to contribute. If this were to
develop a body of knowledge, advanced degree learners would find it very
useful. They are the ones exploring the core and the edges of the literature
under our guidance. 

Faculty already prepare contextual bibliographies with every syllabus. The
course outline and the framing of problems in each session give context for
the readings. Within courses and independent studies we may require
annotated bibliographies. I have to say in my experience I have not ever
seen an annotated bibliography as thorough as the review format Ken
suggests. It's a very didactic approach, and while useful at the PhD level
for literature mastery, I think it's too much for the MDes level, which is a
practitioner degree.  

Consider other practitioner degrees and the level of learning and risk they
must address in their professions - health sciences and engineering for
example. I've been researching and designing information resources for
medical education and biomedical research and I've seen no evidence of this
level of literature review in the med schools and residencies I've observed.
Medicine has become evidence directed to a great extent over the last decade
or so (although evidence-based medicine is not the only modality, I see a
universal reliance on high quality evidence for clinical decision making).
Yet, the practitioners and learners themselves are not creating bibs - they
(almost universally) are weaving readings into practice cases, holding
journal club sessions with faculty, and are talking about controversies and
exceptions in topical conferences.  And yes, annotated materials are
employed in these session, called review articles, a scholarly survey of the
literature around a condition or clinical problem. Authors get credit for
their publication, they are used in education, but the annotated bib per se
is not a major learning device in medicine.

There's good support for this kind of problem-oriented sensemaking approach
to learning literature and advancing knowledge.  But the medical literature
has a more canonical structure than design, and I'd include as well social
sciences. The purposes of medical articles being reviewed are
well-understood by their readers. But the purposes of design research and
publication are usually oriented toward  practice and problems - and design
publication styles vary widely from the iconoclastic to the scientific. Like
engineering, design is (more of) a problem-oriented discipline, and
literatures are used for practical problem investigation more than didactic
knowledge building. So perhaps we need to consider those purposes in new
types of reviews that offer support to practitioners? 

What are we using literatures for? Why can't a list of publications on
Zotero become useful as an emerging reference resource as our contributions
to it yield new insights, that in turn add annotations or commentary to the
lists? Where is our sense of using design thinking to advance the tools of
the trade, as it were? I have more to add to this, but I'd like to hear more
about what the problems are these bibliographies are intended to address.
Are they disciplinary development, literature mastery, or transdisciplinary
problem solving?

Best, Peter

Peter Jones, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor, Faculty of Design
Strategic Foresight and Innovation

OCAD University
http://DesignDialogues.com