Renear and Dubin, “FRBR as an Interdisciplinary High-middle-range Theory for Information Science — A Theoretical Perspective”
While browsing the Zotero Code4Lib group I found this paper added by Mark Matienzo: FRBR as an Interdisciplinary High-middle-range Theory for Information Science — A Theoretical Perspective, by Allen Renear and and Dave Dubin. It was given at a conference last year but I hadn’t come across it before.
ABSTRACT: We suggest that IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records is an interesting, if unexpected, example of Merton’s “theories of the middle range” and show how theoretical analysis and refinement of such theories can illuminate the deep interdisciplinarity of information science.
… At the very heart of the notion of a middle range theory is the view that they guide empirical research by providing hypotheses for exploration, and by explaining empirically observed phenomena. A full account of FRBR as a middle range theory would therefore naturally focus on these hypotheses, the resulting research, and the effectiveness of the theory in explaining empirical observations. However this topic, as important as it is, and as timely as it is, will not be taken up in here. We focus on a different, and somewhat neglected, aspect of middle-range theories: the role of theoretical analysis and refinement in their conceptual evolution.
I hadn’t heard of Robert K. Merton either, but now I have some good reading ahead and perhaps you do too.