Prismatic Realities: Multidisciplinary and Interdisciplinary Cultures and Implications for Information Literacy in Visual Studies: The Case of History of Photography

The specialized field of history of photography (HP) is continually evolving, and its capability to use an historical image as explanatory lens, challenges students navigating the scholarly literature, with implications for information literacy and scholarly communication. How is HP constructed, or mediated via different disciplinary perspectives? Within the domain of visual studies, finding the best way to introduce users to the disciplinary cultures that animate HP is imperative for helping them appreciate the complexity and influence on scholarly communication within the wider scope of visual studies and literacy. Too often the first recourse is fine arts literature and not the richly layered literature appearing in other disciplines—therefore this diagrammatic, and graphical presentation is proposed to inform their information needs and strategies. Predicated upon a definitional conceptual model of disciplinary culture and disciplinary formation informing information literacy, this presentation can be applicable to other humanities disciplinary instruction.