Bernd Frohmann
Bernd Frohmann (1946-2026) was a Canadian philosopher and librarian.
Life
Bernd Peter Ottokar Frohmann was born in 1946. After earning B.A., M.A., and MLS degrees at the University of Toronto, he also received a Ph.D with a dissertation entitled Wittgenstein on proper names in 1982.
Frohmann worked on the Bertrand Russell Editorial Project at McMaster University before becoming a longtime faculty member in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, where he served as Acting Dean, 1995-1997. He retired in 2012 and died in October 2026.
Contributions
After his early work editing Bertrand Russell's papers, he brought philosophical rigor to library and information studies.
- Deflating information : from science studies to documentation. Toronto University of Toronto Press, 2004. This was Frohmann's major work. Drawing on science studies he challenged the idea that communicating information was the main purpose of scholarly scientific literature. He also systematically refuted ("deflated") the central belief in library and information science orthodoxy that information existed as abstract "epistemic content."
- "Best books" and excited readers: Discursive tensions in the writings of Melvil Dewey. Libraries & Culture 32, n 3 (1997): 349-371.
- Revisiting "what is a document? Journal of documentation 65, n 2 (2009):291-303.
- Documentation redux: Prolegomenon to (another) philosophy of information: The Philosophy of Information. Library trends 52, n3 (2004):387-407. [1]
- Multiplicity, materiality, and autonomous agency of documentation. pp 27-39 in A document (re)turn: contributions from a research field in transition, ed by Roswitha Skare and others. Frankfurt am Main ; New York : Peter Lang, 2007.
- Documentary ethics, ontology, and politics. Archival Science 8, n3 (2008):165-180.
- The power of images: a discourse analysis of the cognitive viewpoint. Journal of Documentation 48, n4 (1992):365-386
- The documentality of Mme Briet’s antelope. In J. Packer & S. B. Crofts Wiley (Eds.), Communication matters: Materialist approaches to media, mobility and networks. (pp. 173–182). NY: Routledge, 2012.