Information science

The Ancient Library of Alexandria, an early form of information storage and retrieval.

Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information.^[1] Practitioners within the field study the application and usage of knowledge in organizations, along with the interaction between people, organizations and any existing information systems, with the aim of creating, replacing, improving or understanding information systems. Information science is often (mistakenly) considered a branch of computer science. However, it is actually a broad, interdisciplinary field, incorporating not only aspects of computer science, but often diverse fields such as archival science, cognitive science, commerce, communications, law, library science, museology, management, mathematics, philosophy, public policy, and the social sciences.

Information science focuses on understanding problems from the perspective of the stakeholders involved and then applying information and other technologies as needed. In other words, it tackles systemic problems first rather than individual pieces of technology within that system. In this respect, information science can be seen as a response to technological determinism, the belief that technology "develops by its own laws, that it realizes its own potential, limited only by the material resources available, and must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society." ^[2] Within information science, attention has been given in recent years to human–computer interaction, groupware, the semantic web, value sensitive design, iterative design processes and to the ways people generate, use and find information. Today this field is called the Field of Information, and there are a growing number of Schools and Colleges of Information.

Information science should not be confused with information theory, the study of a particular mathematical concept of information, or with library science, a field related to libraries which uses some of the principles of information science.

Definitions of information science

Information Science consists of having the knowledge and understanding on how to collect, classify, manipulate, store, retrieve and disseminate any type of information.

Some authors treat informatics as a synonym for information science, especially related to the concept developed by A. I. Mikhailov and other Soviet authors in the mid sixties, which suggested that informatics is a discipline related to the study of Scientific Information^[3]. Because of the rapidly evolving, interdisciplinary nature of informatics, a precise meaning of the term "informatics" is presently difficult to pin down.

Regional differences and international terminology complicate the problem. Some people note that much of what is called "Informatics" today was once called "Information Science" at least in fields such as Medical Informatics. For example, when library scientists began also to use the phrase "Information Science" to refer to their work, the term informatics emerged:

• in the United States as a response by computer scientists to distinguish their work from that of library science, and
• in Britain as a term for a science of information that studies natural, as well as artificial or engineered, information-processing systems.

History

Early beginnings

Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, a German polymath who wrote primarily in Latin and French. His fields of study were Metaphysics, Mathematics, Theodicy.

Information science, in studying the collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information has origins in the common stock of human knowledge. Information analysis has been carried out by scholars at least as early as the time of the Abyssinian Empire with the emergence of cultural depositories, what is today known as libraries and archives.^[4] Institutionally, information science emerged in the 19th Century along with many other social science disciplines. As a science, however, it finds its institutional roots in the history of science, beginning with publication of the first issues of Philosophical Transactions, generally considered the first scientific journal, in 1665 by the Royal Society (London).

The institutionalization of science occurred throughout the 18th Century. In 1731, Benjamin Franklin established the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first "public” library, which quickly expanded beyond the realm of books and became a center of scientific experiment, and which hosted public exhibitions of scientific experiments.^[5] Academie de Chirurgia (Paris) published Memoires pour les Chirurgiens, generally considered to be the first medical journal, in 1736. The American Philosophical Society, patterned on the Royal Society (London), was founded in Philadelphia in 1743. As numerous other scientific journals and societies are founded, Alois Senefelder develops the concept of lithography for use in mass printing work in Germany in 1796.

19th century

Joseph Marie Jacquard

By the 19th Century the first signs of information science emerged as separate and distinct from other sciences and social sciences but in conjunction with communication and computation. In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a punched card system to control operations of the cloth weaving loom in France. It was the first use of "memory storage of patterns" system.^[6] As chemistry journals emerged throughout the 1820s and 1830s,^[7] Charles Babbage developed his "difference engine," the first step towards the modern computer, in 1822 and his "analytical engine” by 1834. By 1843 Richard Hoe developed the rotary press, and in 1844 Samuel Morse sent the first public telegraph message. By 1848 William F. Poole begins the Index to Periodical Literature, the first general periodical literature index in the US.

In 1854 George Boole published An Investigation into Laws of Thought..., which lays the foundations for Boolean algebra, which is later used in information retrieval.^[8] In 1860 a congress is held at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule to discuss the feasibility of establishing a systematic and rational nomenclature for chemistry. The congress does not reach any conclusive results, but several key participants return home with Stanislao Cannizzaro's outline (1858), which ultimately convinces them of the validity of his scheme for calculating atomic weights.^[9]

By 1865 the Smithsonian Institution began a catalog of current scientific papers, which became the International Catalogue of Scientific Papers in 1902.^[10] The following year the Royal Society began publication of its Catalogue of Papers in London. In 1868, Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and S. W. Soule produced the first practical typewriter. By 1872 Lord Kelvin devised an analogue computer to predict the tides, and by 1875 Frank Stephen Baldwin was granted the first US patent for a practical calculating machine that performs four arithmetic functions.^[7] Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison invented the telephone and phonograph in 1876 and 1877 respectively, and the American Library Association was founded in Philadelphia. In 1879 Index Medicus was first issued by the Library of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, with John Shaw Billings as librarian, and later the library issues Index Catalogue, which achieved an international reputation as the most complete catalog of medical literature.^[11]

European documentation

The discipline of European Documentation, which marks the earliest theoretical foundations of modern information science, emerged in the late part of the 19th Century together with several more scientific indexes whose purpose was to organize scholarly literature. Most information science historians cite Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine as the fathers of information science with the founding of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) in 1895.^[12] A second generation of European Documentalists emerged after the Second World War, most notably Suzanne Briet. However, "information science" as a term is not popularly used in academia until sometime in the latter part of the 20th Century.^[13]

Documentalists emphasized the utilitarian integration of technology and technique toward specific social goals. According to Ronald Day, "As an organized system of techniques and technologies, documentation was understood as a player in the historical development of global organization in modernity – indeed, a major player inasmuch as that organization was dependent on the organization and transmission of information."^[14] Otlet and Lafontaine (who won the Nobel Prize in 1913) not only envisioned later technical innovations but also projected a global vision for information and information technologies that speaks directly to postwar visions of a global "information society." Otlet and Lafontaine established numerous organizations dedicated to standardization, bibliography, international associations, and consequently, international cooperation. These organizations were fundamental for ensuring international production in commerce, information, communication and modern economic development, and they later found their global form in such institutions as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Otlet designed the Universal Decimal Classification, based on Melville Dewey’s decimal classification system.^[15]

Although he lived decades before computers and networks emerged, what he discussed prefigured what ultimately became the World Wide Web. His vision of a great network of knowledge focused on documents and included the notions of hyperlinks, search engines, remote access, and social networks.

Otlet not only imagined that all the world's knowledge should be interlinked and made available remotely to anyone, but he also proceeded to build a structured document collection. This collection involved standardized paper sheets and cards filed in custom-designed cabinets according to a hierarchical index (which culled information worldwide from diverse sources) and a commercial information retrieval service (which answered written requests by copying relevant information from index cards). Users of this service were even warned if their query was likely to produce more than 50 results per search.^[15] By 1937 documentation had formally been institutionalized, as evidenced by the founding of the American Documentation Institute (ADI), later called the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

Transition to modern information science

Vannevar Bush, a famous information scientist, ca. 1940–1944

With the 1950s came increasing awareness of the potential of automatic devices for literature searching and information storage and retrieval. As these concepts grew in magnitude and potential, so did the variety of information science interests. By the 1960s and 70s, there was a move from batch processing to online modes, from mainframe to mini and microcomputers. Additionally, traditional boundaries among disciplines began to fade and many information science scholars joined with library programs. They further made themselves multidisciplinary by incorporating disciplines in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as other professional programs, such as law and medicine in their curriculum. By the 1980s, large databases, such as Grateful Med at the National Library of Medicine, and user-oriented services such as Dialog and Compuserve, were for the first time accessible by individuals from their personal computers. The 1980s also saw the emergence of numerous special interest groups to respond to the changes. By the end of the decade, special interest groups were available involving non-print media, social sciences, energy and the environment, and community information systems. Today, information science largely examines technical bases, social consequences, and theoretical understanding of online databases, widespread use of databases in government, industry, and education, and the development of the Internet and World Wide Web.^[16]

Important historical figures

Related disciplines

There are many fields which claims to be "sciences" or "disciplines" which are difficult to distinguish from each other and from information science. Some of them are:

• Archival science
• Communication studies
• Computer science
• Documentation (field)
• Informatics
• Information management
• Information systems research
• Internet studies
• Knowledge management
• Library science
• Media studies
• Scientometrics

Topics in information science

"Knowledge Map of Information Science" from Zins,Chaim, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 17 January 2007

Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics is a set of quantitative methods used to study or measure texts and information and is one of the largest research areas within information science.

Bibliometric methods include the journal Impact Factor, a relatively crude but useful method of estimating the impact of the research published within a journal, in comparison to other journals in the same field. Bibliometrics is often used to evaluate or compare the impact of groups of researchers within a field. In addition it is also used to describe the development of fields, particularly new areas of research.

Data modeling

Data modeling is the process of creating a data model by applying a data model theory to create a data model instance. A data model theory is a formal data model description. See database model for a list of current data model theories.

Data modeling is structuring and organizing data. These data structures are then typically implemented in a database management system. In addition to defining and organizing the data, data modeling will impose (implicitly or explicitly) constraints or limitations on the data placed within the structure.

Managing large quantities of structured and unstructured data is a primary function of information systems. Data models describe structured data for storage in data management systems such as relational databases. They typically do not describe unstructured data, such as word processing documents, email messages, pictures, digital audio, and video.

Document management

Document management and engineering is a computer system (or set of computer programs) used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. Document management systems have some overlap with Content Management Systems, Enterprise Content Management Systems, Digital Asset Management, Document imaging, Workflow systems and Records Management systems.

Groupware

Groupware is software designed to help people get involved in a common task to achieve their goals. Collaborative software is the basis for computer supported cooperative work.

Such software systems as email, calendaring, text chat, wiki belong in this category. It has been suggested that Metcalfe's law – the more people who use something, the more valuable it becomes – applies to such software.

The more general term social software applies to systems used outside the workplace, for example, online dating services and social networks like Friendster. The study of computer-supported collaboration includes the study of this software and social phenomena associated with it.

Human-computer interaction

Human-computer interaction (HCI), alternatively man-machine interaction (MMI) or Human machine interface (HMI) or computer–human interaction (CHI), is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers. It is an interdisciplinary subject, relating computer science with many other fields of study and research. Interaction between users and computers occurs at the user interface (or simply interface), which includes both software and hardware, for example, general purpose computer peripherals and large-scale mechanical systems such as aircraft and power plants.

Information architecture

Information architecture is the practice of structuring information (knowledge or data) for a purpose. These are often structured according to their context in user interactions or larger databases. While most commonly applied to Web development, the term also applies to other disciplines such as programming , technical writing and Enterprise Architecture.

The term information architecture describes a specialized skill set which relates to the management of information and employment of informational tools. It has a significant degree of association with the library sciences. Many library schools now teach information architecture.

An alternate definition of information architecture exists within the context of information system design, in which information architecture refers to data modeling and the analysis and design of the information in the system, concentrating on entities and their interdependencies. Data modeling depends on abstraction; the data relationships are of more interest than the particulars of individual records, though cataloging possible values is a common technique. The usability of human-facing systems are paramount.

Information ethics

Information ethics is the field that investigates the ethical issues arising from the development and application of information technologies. It provides a critical framework for considering moral issues concerning informational privacy, moral agency (e.g. whether artificial agents may be moral), new environmental issues (especially how agents should one behave in the infosphere), problems arising from the life-cycle (creation, collection, recording, distribution, processing, etc.) of information (especially ownership and copyright, digital divide). Information Ethics is therefore strictly related to the fields of computer ethics (Floridi, 1999) and the philosophy of information.

Dilemmas regarding the life of information are becoming increasingly important in a society that is defined as "the information society". Information transmission and literacy are essential concerns in establishing an ethical foundation that promotes fair, equitable, and responsible practices. Information ethics broadly examines issues related to, among other things, ownership, access, privacy, security, and community.

Information technology affects fundamental rights involving copyright protection, intellectual freedom, accountability, and security.

Professional codes offer a basis for making ethical decisions and applying ethical solutions to situations involving information provision and use which reflect an organization’s commitment to responsible information service. Evolving information formats and needs require continual reconsideration of ethical principles and how these codes are applied. Considerations regarding information ethics influence personal decisions, professional practice, and public policy.

Information retrieval

Information retrieval (IR), often studied in conjunction with information storage, is the science of searching for information in documents, searching for documents themselves, searching for metadata which describe documents, or searching within databases, whether relational stand-alone databases or hypertextually-networked databases such as the World Wide Web. There is a common confusion, however, between data retrieval, document retrieval, information retrieval, and text retrieval, and each of these has its own bodies of literature, theory, praxis and technologies. IR is, like most nascent fields, interdisciplinary, based on computer science, mathematics, library science, information science, cognitive psychology, linguistics, statistics and physics.

Automated IR systems are used to reduce information overload and to scale indexing and access. Many universities and public libraries use IR systems to provide access to books, journals, and other documents. IR systems are often related to digital objects and query. Queries are formal statements of information needs that are put to an IR system by the user. An object is an entity which keeps or stores information in a database. User queries are matched to objects stored in the database. A document is, therefore, a data object. Retrieval order is based on similarity of the query to the object and, more recently, to a level of importance of the document, such as PageRank. Sometimes the documents themselves are not kept or stored directly in the IR system, but are instead represented in the system by document surrogates.

Information society

Information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. The knowledge economy is its economic counterpart whereby wealth is created through the economic exploitation of understanding.

Specific to this kind of society is the central position information technology has for production, economy, and society at large. Information society is seen as the successor to industrial society. Closely related concepts are the post-industrial society (Daniel Bell), post-fordism, post-modern society, knowledge society, Telematic Society, Information Revolution, and network society (Manuel Castells).

Information systems

An information system is a technologically implemented medium for recording, storing, and disseminating linguistic expressions, as well as for drawing conclusions from such expressions.

The technology used for implementing information systems by no means has to be computer technology. A notebook in which one lists certain items of interest is, according to that definition, an information system. Likewise, there are computer applications that do not comply with this definition of information systems. Embedded systems are an example. A computer application that is integrated into clothing or even the human body does not generally deal with linguistic expressions. One could, however, try to generalize Langefors' definition so as to cover more recent developments.

Intellectual property

Intellectual property (IP) is a disputed umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain names, written and recorded media, and inventions. The holders of these legal entitlements are generally entitled to exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term intellectual property links the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect together with the political and economical notion of property. The close linking of these two ideas is a matter of some controversy. It is criticised as "a fad" by Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School and by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation as an "overgeneralization" and "at best a catch-all to lump together disparate laws".^[17]

Intellectual property laws and enforcement vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. There are inter-governmental efforts to harmonise them through international treaties such as the 1994 World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), while other treaties may facilitate registration in more than one jurisdiction at a time. Enforcement of copyright, disagreements over medical and software patents, and the dispute regarding the nature of "intellectual property" as a cohesive notion^[17] have so far prevented the emergence of a cohesive international system.

Knowledge management

Knowledge management comprises a range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness, and learning across the organizations.

Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organizational objectives and are intended to lead to the achievement of specific outcomes, such as shared intelligence, improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation.

Knowledge transfer (one aspect of Knowledge Management) has always existed in one form or another. Examples include: on-the-job peer discussions, formal apprenticeship, corporate libraries, professional training, and mentoring programs. However, since the late twentieth century, additional technology has been applied to this task.

Knowledge engineering

Knowledge engineering is also related to mathematical logic, as well as strongly involved in cognitive science and socio-cognitive engineering where the knowledge is produced by socio-cognitive aggregates (mainly humans) and is structured according to our understanding of how human reasoning and logic works. Knowledge engineering (KE), often studied in conjunction with knowledge management, refers to the building, maintaining and development of knowledge-based systems. It has a great deal in common with software engineering, and is related to many computer science domains such as artificial intelligence, databases, data mining, expert systems, decision support systems and geographic information systems.

Personal information management

Personal information management (PIM) as a field of study covers many of the same areas as information science but approaches the study of information from the perspective of the whole person. How is information in various forms (paper documents, wikis, blogs, email, etc.) used by people in support of their efforts to understand and effect useful change in their world? How can tools of information management help?

Semantic web

Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a form that can be understood, interpreted and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.^[18] It derives from W3C director Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange.

At its core, the Semantic Web comprises a philosophy,^[19] a set of design principles,^[20] collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies. Some elements of the Semantic Web are expressed as prospective future possibilities that have yet to be implemented or realized.^[21] Other elements of the Semantic Web are expressed in formal specifications.^[22] Some of these include Resource Description Framework (RDF), a variety of data interchange formats (e.g. RDF/XML, N3, Turtle, and notations such as RDF Schema (RDFS) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). All of which are intended to formally describe concepts, terms, and relationships within a given problem domain.

Usability engineering

Usability engineering is a subset of human factors that is specific to computer science and is concerned with the question of how to design software that is easy to use. It is closely related to the field of human-computer interaction and industrial design. The term "usability engineering" (UE) (in contrast to other names of the discipline, like interaction design or user experience design) tends to describe a pragmatic approach to user interface design which emphasizes empirical methods and operational definitions of user requirements for tools. Extending as far as International Organisation for Standardisation-approved definitions usability is considered a context-dependent agreement of the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specific users should be able to perform tasks. Advocates of this approach engage in task analysis, then prototype interface designs and conduct usability tests. On the basis of such tests, the technology is (ideally) re-designed or (occasionally) the operational targets for user performance are revised.

User-centered design

User-centered design is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of an interface to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like.

The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the system or function.

Research

Many universities have entire colleges, departments or schools or devoted to the study of information science, while numerous information science scholars can be found in disciplines such as communication, computer science, law, library science, and sociology. Several institutions have formed an I-School Caucus (see List of I-Schools), but there are numerous others with comprehensive information foci.

Research methods

Information science has similar research methods to computer science and social sciences:

Archival research

Facts or factual evidences from a variety of records are compiled.

Computational complexity and structure

Algorithmic and graphic methods are used to explore the complexity of information systems, retrieval and storage.

Content analysis

The contents of books and mass media are analyzed to study how people communicate and the messages people talk or write about.

Case study

A specific set of circumstances or a group (the 'case') is analyzed according to a specific goal of study. Generally, case studies are used to characterize a trend or development; they have weak generalizability.

Discourse analysis

Analyzing written, spoken or signed language use

Historical method

This involves a continuous and systematic search for the information and knowledge about past events related to the life of a person, a group, society, or the world.

Interviews

The researcher obtains data by interviewing people. If the interview is non-structured, the researcher leaves it to the interviewee (also referred to as the respondent or the informant) to guide the conversation.

Life history

This is the study of the personal life of a person. Through a series of interviews, the researcher can probe into the decisive moments in their life or the various influences on their life.

Longitudinal study

This is an extensive examination of a specific group over a long period of time.

Observation

Using data from the senses, one records information about a social phenomenon or behavior. Qualitative research relies heavily on observation, although it is in a highly disciplined form.

Participant observation

As the name implies, the researcher goes to the field (usually a community), lives with the people for some time, and participates in their activities in order to know and feel their culture.

See also

• Informatics
• Information technology – The use of computers and technology to manage information.
• Enterprise content management – Strategies and technologies for managing content, documents and information
• International Federation for Information Processing – Global body for informatics.
• Personal information management (PIM)
• Philosophy of information
• Informative modelling

References

Further reading

• Khosrow-Pour, Mehdi (2005-03-22). Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology. Idea Group Reference. ISBN 159140553X. 

External links

• Knowledge Map of Information Science
• LIBRES - Library and Information Science Research Electronic Journal - Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Western Australia
• Journal of Information Science
• What Has Information Science Contributed to the World?
• Digital Library of Information Science and Technology open access archive for the Information Sciences
• Current Information Science Research at U.S. Geological Survey
• Introduction to Information Science
• The Nitecki Trilogy
• Information science at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s: a memoir of student days
• Chronology of Information Science and Technology