Talk:Library science

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[edit] NPOV?

This entry needs to be entirely rewritten, for several reasons.

First, the article lacks a neutral point of view. The bulk of the entry is really little more than the author’s own personal critique of librarianship and library and information science programs. It is simply not appropriate for an encyclopedia.

Second, it does not adequately describe the topic. There is no treatment of the history of library science or librarianship, nor an adequate explanation of the evolution of the discipline and its programs into modern-day Library and Information Science.

Compare this article with that of the same topic published in the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, and you will see a marked difference in both coverage and tone.

Third, the list of links to Library and Information Science schools and other randomly chosen web sites is not selective, useful, or well organized. It should simply be deleted, or replaced with a select list of three or four links.

Now, I personally agree with several of the points raised by the author. Nevertheless, these are our opinions; opinions that are not shared by all.

I'm removing the following sentence for the reasons below.

"Information" and "documentation" means non-book materials that university libraries deal with, such as magazines, scientific journals, technical reports, and access to online databases.

Why define "documentation" which is not mentioned elsewhere in the article? The definition given is not a good definition of either "information" or "documentation". Non-book materials are dealt with by practically all types of libraries, not just academic libraries. Nurg 03:46, 7 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Is NPOV still disputed? It has been over a year since the related talk. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:15, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Nobody seems to disagree that the npov should be gained, so I'm going to rewrite the article. I hope I can find citations to back up the original poster's assertions, since I'd rather not just delete them or replace them with weasel words. I'll be doing the rewrite tonight; kibbitzing is welcome. Deborah-jl 01:49, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I had a tough time finding any sources to backup the non-npov statements, but I supported what I could and rewrote as best I could without using weasel words. There's plenty to fill in in the article structure as I've left it, and I am going to try to get some of that now. Deborah-jl 03:51, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
if there are no neutral sources, and the only sources are non-neutral, then it seems to me that this article should be deleted or merged. --Buridan 14:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Buridan, no sources are free from bias. It is the job of the editor to make use of multiple sources to produce a balanced article. For this subject, there are different ways it is written about and studied, and anyone paying attention to their origin and use can describe them, and document them. Where there is no consensus is in the way it ought to be studied, and these different views need to be given. Fortunately, most of the real problems belong in an article on education for librarianship, although I do not think it exists yet. DGG 03:34, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] External links

This page has a very high ratio of external links to actual information on it, it is more of a links page than an information page; particularly as some of the external links are not in the smallish external links section. Given that WikiPedia is aiming to be an information source not a proxy for the internet couldn't we do the directs for the first list to the WikiPedia page on each institution and then only do the external link from there?

Please bear in mind that a school child who has persuaded his IT teacher to give him access to WIkiPedia isn't going to be allowed to follow external links off wikipedia.org (talk)--BozMo 20:37, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

nobody has disagreed, so I'm going to move the external links to library science programs to a page of library science programs linking to the schools' wiki pages, ala List_of_current_and_historical_women's_universities_and_colleges. Deborah-jl 01:52, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I've created two stub pages with wiki links extracted from this page, one for graduate programs in LIS, and one for associations. Both need extensive organization and fleshing out. I removed the URLs from those lists, because external URLs should be in the Wikipedia pages, not the lists. I left alone the somewhat odd list of external links, because there's too much other work to do. Deborah-jl 03:55, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)


How did you reach these conclusions? (Karen)

What conclusions, Karen? Deborah-jl Talk 00:48, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

Consider merging the following categories: Category:Style guides, Category:Bibliography and Category:Reference and making them a subcategory of Category:Library and information science. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 17:15, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] U. S. Centric

The work I've been doing lately is very U.S.-centric, because it's what I know. non-United States input would be greatly appreciated. Deborah-jl 20:26, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for clarification

First sentence refers to "the information fields". What are these?

3rd para says "LIS is distinct from librarianship" but much of the rest of the article is about "Types of librarianship". Should librarianship be moved to the librarian article, or a new article made for librarianship or should this article be expanded to include both LIS and librarianship? Nurg 04:07, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion of the theory/development of the field?

Is there a link I missed that takes one to a discussion of the theoretical foundations of the field? I mostly see a discussion of librarianship (which is fine on its own), but perhaps this could use a bit of discussion about the various "paradigms" (if I may use that loaded word) such as the focus on systems, the cognitive focus on the individual, and the more social constructionist and/or domain analytic views? Would they be more appropriate for other articles? I just feel that "Library and Information Science" could use more discussion of "Information Science" as well. I'd write it myself given more time (and if I trusted myself to write something worthy, which I don't right now since I'm only a lowly MLIS student), but in any case, some theory is nice. I looked on some of the linked pages that I thought might include some of that, but had no luck. So maybe this is a good place to discuss some of the theorists and models. If it belongs elsewhere (and I'm sure some of it already exists elsewhere), let me know. Thanks! Disarm10 08:51, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Library Science"

The term "library science" was coined by Lee Pierce Butler and was first seen in the title of his 1933 book, An introduction to library science (University of Chicago Press).

However, S.R. Ranganathan's The Five Laws of Library Science, was published in 1931. Is this not a prior use of the term? Schabot 19:35, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Butler joined the faculty of the GLS in '31... so I guess they were contemporaneous. Thank you for this info. I will edit the page accordingly. Rlitwin 20:00, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] more clarification

I think the assertions in the "distinction" paragraph are confused, LIS does means "Library and Inforation science", but the two parts are "library science," also known as "librarianship" and "information science," which is indeed not the same as informatics, but it's related.

There is no distinction between "library science" and "librarianship" --they are synonyms.-- " Library science" is just a fancier name. It is not correct that "librarianship" is the practice, and "lib sci" the theory or the research. The name of the degree or the name of the school is accidental, or more correctly faddish. There are--alas--some librarians who know no inf sci and do not want to, and there are many inf sci peope who disdain librarians.

The trend recently has been to emphasize the inf sci part, and some LIS schools have renamed to try to make it look that they're not teaching librarians, who they see as as relatively low class people compared to the ones who know calculus and probability and can actually read JASIST. Despite the satire, I think I have a NPOV in this, as I do have a degree in math, can read one-half of JASIST, have worked in a library 20 yrs or more, and have recently been on the faculty at LIU, teaching the traditional library courses. The last few years, some of the LIS schools have been informally calling themselves "I-schools" indicating a research emphasis in inf sci., and sometimes a teaching emphasis., but thats another matter. Pages on LIS education too, is another matter. Pages on hist of librarianship (and hist of inf sci]) are also another matter, Once we get this p. rational, then we can work on them. I'd put them all on sep pages, biut it doesnt matter as long as they do our professon credit. All the above can be doc, from internet and LIS sites, and textbooks. And I think the inf sci and the lib sci pts can be balanced. ditto on practice and research. I dont want to throw out the existing part without some sort of consensusDGG 04:05, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

There is also an article on List of basic library and information science topics which may clarify the article here,

[edit] last edit

Reducing a paragraph to one sentence is not a minor edit. DGG 06:39, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] librarianship

Are there any references that distinguish the two. I've used and taught them as synonyms, but then I do like theory. DGG 08:14, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

As I have seen no references whatsoever that make the distinction betweeen theory and practice suggested in this article, I have marked that section "fact?", and added a line saying that there may be no distinction, also marked "fact?" I shall add a few references here as they occur, and invite those who think the terms are used with the proposed difference in meaning betweeen theory and practice to do likewise. DGG 00:41, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] name of topic

As mentioned in September, this main artice on, Library and information science talks only about library science. It even distinguishes that article from the actual articles on information science:

"Not to be confused with Information science."

This is not logical. It's like saying "This article is about apples and pears. Apples is treated below. For pears, see the article on Pears."

  • To the best of my knowledge the usage of the phrase "Library and Information Science is only in the following contexts:
  1. as the name for a school (or college or department). This represents an effort to try to escape the stigma of "libraries". Many such schools do have programs in information science as well as library science, but not all of them do.
  2. as the name of a degree "MLIS". Here again its the attempt to avoid the same stigma, and pretend that the graduates actually do know something about information science, which can of course sometimes be the case. More neutrally, it can simply be regarded as elegant variation
  3. in the titles of textbooks (or of a few journals). Again, this is simply variation.

So I suppose its ok with everyone to change the necessary existing articles to represent the stated content, beginning with thepresent LIS page. As a *But with any encourgement at all, could start separating out the library topics, and change the page name. :) DGG 05:29, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I think this has been discussed before and it gets quite complex. We are not only dealing with U.S. meanings of the words but also British. Right now Library and information science is just a redirect to here Library science. I think that is the best way to go considering the usages you mentioned above, lib schools etc. Information science and Informatics are different fields and have their own pages, though there is a whole different debate on the overlap between those two, which also falls into regional usages of the words. I am not sure I completely understand your name change proposals, but to me it seems ok as it is. Maybe you can elaborate. Nowimnthing 16:49, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
Good , I didn't spot it, as I was working from memory--about which I feel a little embarrased. Thanks, now I can go on to further improvements without worrying about this. .DGG 17:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] rearranged headings

according to the general discussion on this & ohter LIS pages, as I see it--I have no illusion that what I did is the least definitive, but it seemed logical as a start, & I'm sure others will improve on it.DGG 00:58, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] disambiguation issues?

right now, there's a note on the top of this article: not to be confused with informatics and not to be confused with information science. First off, this is non-standard wording (generally this sort of confusion is clarified in the text itself, with disambigs being used for terms that have the exact same name) and second, "library and information science" redirects here, so, uh... --phoebe 06:47, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

and yes, I see now that this was discussed two lines up. Guess I should learn to read! but this is still non-standard wording, and the kind of thing that should be discussed in the text itself. --phoebe 07:14, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent merge

Please see the recent discussion at WP:CFD, for Jan. 20, item 1.9 Category:Library and Information Science, which is about to be changed into Category:Library Science--a very good move. in my opinion, for reasons I've given there. Is this merge of the history section compatible--personally I think it overbalances the article here.DGG 04:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it is fine. --Buridan 12:19, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Public library Bhuj

In India, public library is a very useful place for society. In the corner of the India our Kutch District is a very lrge area of the state Gujarat. On earth queck day 26/01/2001, Govt. District Library, BHUJ is badly damage; then destroi it. Now new building is available with more facility for public. Govt of Gujarat and World Bank help for financial suport. So over 1 crore Indian Rupees this library runing very well in progress. It has over 25,000 books. Fully computeriesed facility available in this library. News Paper and Serials are available for reders. In progress Director of Library, Govt. of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, Dr. A F Shekh is so many iterested for the library devlopment.With suport him all staff of the department hard work for progress of the library service more efective. Jagdish Majethiya - BHUJ.

[edit] Specialty if not paradigm

  • Do librarians confuse electric and elecronic books? True librarians would classify whatever need be classified. Meanwhile, why are they so desperate not to separate information science from librarianship? Surely, they are free to abstract anything from anything, hence, LIS from librarianship plus information science. However, such might be ridiculously called a greedy reductionism. Such things as abstraction and implication are boundless indeed. Greedy librarians simply appear wise or foolish enough to know that! But are they truly wise or foolish? --gybag 13:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New article request

Hi there, I'd like to suggest a new article on the full history of information handling/management/techonology (details). I'm not knowledgeable enough to do it myself, but contributors here probably are. Thanks, JackyR | Talk 18:04, 4 December 2007 (UTC)