Genres as Shape: Forms, Norms, and Connoisseurship

We recognize and use genre forms as a communication device to aid interpretation, share ideas, and signal participation in a community or group. In information design and use, genre is often considered as a cue to knowledge organization and categorization, allowing for more nuanced placement or description of rich content. However, operationalizing genre in a manner that supports knowledge organization and categorization for access has proved challenging. The present paper emphasizes approaching the problem from the theoretical and methodological lenses of user experience. In so doing, it operationalizes genre as a form of information shape that can be identified best through user studies and applied methodically by library and information studies professionals. Ultimately, the paper argues that information organization is a form of connoisseurship that library and information studies should cultivate for itself, unrestricted by the dominant genre theories of rhetoric and sociolinguistics.