Information-centered research for large-scale analyses of new information sources

New mass publishing genres, such as blogs and personal home pages provide a rich source of social data that is yet to be fully exploited by the social sciences and humanities. Information-centered research (ICR) not only provides a genuinely new and useful information science research model for this type of data, but can also contribute to the emerging e-research infrastructure. Nevertheless, ICR should not be conducted on a purely abstract level, but should relate to potentially relevant problems.