Information science


Information science is an academic field that is primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information. Practitioners within and outside the field engage in the study of knowledge application and usage in organizations. Additionally, they examine the interaction between people, organizations, and any existing information systems. The objective of this study is to create, replace, improve, or understand the information systems.

Disciplines and related fields

Historically, information science has evolved as a transdisciplinary field, both drawing from and contributing to diverse domains.

Core foundations

Information science methodologies are applied across numerous domains, reflecting the discipline's versatility and relevance. Key application areas include:
The interdisciplinary nature of information science continues to expand as new technological developments and social practices emerge, creating innovative research frontiers that bridge traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Foundations

Scope and approach

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, one can see information science 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 the creativity of its developers. It must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society."
Many universities have entire colleges, departments or schools devoted to the study of information science, while numerous information-science scholars work in disciplines such as communication, healthcare, computer science, law, and sociology. Several institutions have formed an I-School Caucus, but numerous others besides these also have comprehensive information specializations.
Within information science, current issues include:
The first known usage of the term "information science" was in 1955. An early definition of Information science states:

Related terms

Some authors use informatics as a synonym for information science. This is especially true when related to the concept developed by A. I. Mikhailov and other Soviet authors in the mid-1960s. The Mikhailov school saw informatics as a discipline related to the study of scientific information.
Informatics is difficult to precisely define because of the rapidly evolving and interdisciplinary nature of the field. Definitions reliant on the nature of the tools used for deriving meaningful information from data are emerging in Informatics academic programs.
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 also began 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
  • in Britain as a term for a science of information that studies natural, as well as artificial or engineered, information-processing systems
Another term discussed as a synonym for "information studies" is "information systems". Brian Campbell Vickery's Information Systems placed information systems within IS., on the other hand, provided a bibliometric investigation describing the relation between two different fields: "information science" and "information systems".

Philosophy of information

Philosophy of information studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection of psychology, computer science, information technology, and philosophy. It includes the investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation and sciences, as well as the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to its philosophical problems. Robert Hammarberg pointed out that there is no coherent distinction between information and data: "an Information Processing System cannot process data except in terms of whatever representational language is inherent to it, data could not even be apprehended by an IPS without becoming representational in nature, and thus losing their status of being raw, brute, facts."

Ontology

In science and information science, an ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, and the relationships between those concepts. It can be used to reason about the entities within that domain and may be used to describe the domain.
More specifically, an ontology is a model for describing the world that consists of a set of types, properties, and relationship types. Exactly what is provided around these varies, but they are the essentials of an ontology. There is also generally an expectation that there be a close resemblance between the real world and the features of the model in an ontology.
In theory, an ontology is a "formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation". An ontology renders shared vocabulary and taxonomy which models a domain with the definition of objects and/or concepts and their properties and relations.
Ontologies are the structural frameworks for organizing information and are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, systems engineering, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, enterprise bookmarking, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. The creation of domain ontologies is also essential to the definition and use of an enterprise architecture framework.

Science or discipline?

Authors such as Ingwersen argue that informatology has problems defining its own boundaries with other disciplines. According to Popper "Information science operates busily on an ocean of commonsense practical applications, which increasingly involve the computer... and on commonsense views of language, of communication, of knowledge and Information, computer science is in little better state". Other authors, such as Furner, deny that information science is a true science.

Careers

Information scientist

An information scientist is an individual, usually with a relevant subject degree or high level of subject knowledge, who provides focused information to scientific and technical research staff in industry or to subject faculty and students in academia. The industry *information specialist/scientist* and the academic information subject specialist/librarian have, in general, similar subject background training, but the academic position holder will be required to hold a second advanced degree—e.g. Master of Library Science, Military Intelligence, Master of Arts —in information and library studies in addition to a subject master's. The title also applies to an individual carrying out research in information science.

Systems analyst

A systems analyst works on creating, designing, and improving information systems for a specific need. Often systems analysts work with one or more businesses to evaluate and implement organizational processes and techniques for accessing information in order to improve efficiency and productivity within the organization.

Information professional

An information professional is an individual who preserves, organizes, and disseminates information. Information professionals are skilled in the organization and retrieval of recorded knowledge. Traditionally, their work has been with print materials, but these skills are being increasingly used with electronic, visual, audio, and digital materials. Information professionals work in a variety of public, private, non-profit, and academic institutions. Information professionals can also be found within organisational and industrial contexts, and are performing roles that include system design and development and system analysis.

History

Early beginnings

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 Assyrian Empire with the emergence of cultural depositories, what is today known as libraries and archives. 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.
The institutionalization of science occurred throughout the 18th century. In 1731, Benjamin Franklin established the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first library owned by a group of public citizens, which quickly expanded beyond the realm of books and became a center of scientific experimentation, and which hosted public exhibitions of scientific experiments. Benjamin Franklin invested a town in Massachusetts with a collection of books that the town voted to make available to all free of charge, forming the first public library of the United States. Academie de Chirurgia published Memoires pour les Chirurgiens, generally considered to be the first medical journal, in 1736. The American Philosophical Society, patterned on the Royal Society, was founded in Philadelphia in 1743. As numerous other scientific journals and societies were founded, Alois Senefelder developed the concept of lithography for use in mass printing work in Germany in 1796.