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Information science[1][2][3] (sometimes abbreviated asinfosci) is an academic field which is primarily concerned withanalysis, collection,classification, manipulation, storage,retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection ofinformation.[4] Practitioners within and outside the field study the application and the usage of knowledge inorganizations in addition to the interaction between people, organizations, and any existinginformation systems with the aim of creating, replacing, improving, or understanding the information systems.
Historically, information science has evolved as a transdisciplinary field, both drawing from and contributing to diverse domains.[5]
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.
Information science focuses on understandingproblems 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 oftechnology within that system. In this respect, one can see information science as a response totechnological 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."[7]
Many universities have entire colleges, departments or schools devoted to the study of information science, while numerous information-science scholars work in disciplines such ascommunication,healthcare,computer science,law, andsociology. Several institutions have formed an I-School Caucus (seeList of I-Schools), but numerous others besides these also have comprehensive information specializations.
Within information science, current issues as of 2013[update] include:
The first known usage of the term "information science" was in 1955.[8] An early definition of Information science (going back to 1968, the year when theAmerican Documentation Institute renamed itself as theAmerican Society for Information Science and Technology) states:
Some authors useinformatics as a synonym forinformation science. This is especially true when related to the concept developed byA. 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.[10]Informatics is difficult to precisely define because of the rapidly evolving andinterdisciplinary 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.[11]
Regional differences and international terminology complicate the problem. Some people[which?] note that much of what is called "Informatics" today was once called "Information Science" – at least in fields such asMedical Informatics. For example, when library scientists also began to use the phrase "Information Science" to refer to their work, the term "informatics" emerged:
Another term discussed as a synonym for "information studies" is "information systems".Brian Campbell Vickery'sInformation Systems (1973) placed information systems within IS.[12]Ellis, Allen & Wilson (1999), on the other hand, provided a bibliometric investigation describing the relation between twodifferent fields: "information science" and "information systems".[13]
Philosophy of information studies conceptual issues arising at the intersection ofpsychology,computer science,information technology, andphilosophy. It includes the investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles ofinformation, including its dynamics, utilisation and sciences, as well as the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to its philosophical problems.[14] Robert Hammarberg pointed out that there is no coherent distinction between information and data: "an Information Processing System (IPS) cannot process data except in terms of whatever representational language is inherent to it, [so] data could not even be apprehended by an IPS without becoming representational in nature, and thus losing their status of being raw, brute, facts."[15]
In science and information science, an ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within adomain, and the relationships between those concepts. It can be used toreason 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.[16]
In theory, an ontology is a "formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation".[17] An ontology renders sharedvocabulary andtaxonomy which models a domain with the definition of objects and/or concepts and their properties and relations.[18]
Ontologies are the structural frameworks for organizing information and are used inartificial intelligence, theSemantic Web,systems engineering,software engineering,biomedical informatics,library science,enterprise bookmarking, andinformation architecture as a form ofknowledge representation about the world or some part of it. The creation of domain ontologies is also essential to the definition and use of anenterprise architecture framework.
Authors such as Ingwersen[3] 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".[19] Other authors, such as Furner, deny that information science is a true science.[20]
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 (MLS), Military Intelligence (MI), Master of Arts (MA)—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.
A systems analyst works on creating, designing, and improving information systems for a specific need. Often systems analysts work with one or morebusinesses to evaluate and implement organizational processes and techniques for accessing information in order to improveefficiency andproductivity within the organization(s).
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,[21] and are performing roles that include system design and development and system analysis.
Information science, in studying the collection,classification, manipulation, storage,retrieval and dissemination ofinformation 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 theAssyrian Empire with the emergence of cultural depositories, what is today known as libraries and archives.[22] 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 thehistory of science, beginning with publication of the first issues ofPhilosophical Transactions, generally considered the first scientific journal, in 1665 by the Royal Society.
Theinstitutionalization of science occurred throughout the 18th century. In 1731,Benjamin Franklin established theLibrary 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 ofscientific experimentation, and which hosted public exhibitions of scientific experiments.[23] Benjamin Franklin invested a town inMassachusetts with a collection of books that the town voted to make available to all free of charge, forming the firstpublic library of theUnited States.[24] Academie de Chirurgia (Paris) publishedMemoires pour les Chirurgiens, generally considered to be the firstmedical journal, in 1736. TheAmerican Philosophical Society, patterned on theRoyal Society (London), was founded in Philadelphia in 1743. As numerous other scientific journals and societies were founded,Alois Senefelder developed the concept oflithography for use in mass printing work inGermany in 1796.
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.[25] As chemistry journals emerged throughout the 1820s and 1830s,[26]Charles Babbage developed his "difference engine", the first step towards the modern computer, in 1822 and his "analytical engine" by 1834. By 1843Richard Hoe developed the rotary press, and in 1844Samuel Morse sent the first public telegraph message. By 1848 William F. Poole begins theIndex to Periodical Literature, the first general periodical literature index in the US.
In 1854George Boole publishedAn Investigation into Laws of Thought..., which lays the foundations forBoolean algebra, which is later used ininformation retrieval.[27] In 1860 a congress was held at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule to discuss the feasibility of establishing a systematic and rational nomenclature for chemistry. The congress did not reach any conclusive results, but several key participants returned home withStanislao Cannizzaro's outline (1858), which ultimately convinces them of the validity of his scheme for calculating atomic weights.[28]
By 1865, theSmithsonian Institution began a catalog of current scientific papers, which became theInternational Catalogue of Scientific Papers in 1902.[29] The following year the Royal Society began publication of itsCatalogue of Papers in London. In 1868, Christopher Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and S. W. Soule produced thefirst practical typewriter. By 1872 Lord Kelvin devised an analogue computer to predict the tides, and by 1875Frank Stephen Baldwin was granted the first US patent for a practical calculating machine that performs four arithmetic functions.[26]Alexander Graham Bell andThomas Edison invented the telephone and phonograph in 1876 and 1877 respectively, and theAmerican Library Association was founded in Philadelphia. In 1879Index Medicus was first issued by the Library of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, withJohn Shaw Billings as librarian, and later the library issuesIndex Catalogue, which achieved an international reputation as the most complete catalog of medical literature.[30]
The discipline ofdocumentation science, which marks the earliest theoretical foundations of modern information science, emerged in the late part of the 19th century in Europe together with several more scientific indexes whose purpose was to organize scholarly literature. Many information science historians citePaul Otlet andHenri La Fontaine as the fathers of information science with the founding of the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) in 1895.[31] A second generation of European Documentalists emerged after theSecond World War, most notablySuzanne Briet.[32] However, "information science" as a term is not popularly used in academia until sometime in the latter part of the 20th century.[33]
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."[33] Otlet and Lafontaine (who won theNobel Prize in 1913) not only envisioned later technical innovations but also projected a global vision for information andinformation 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 theLeague of Nations and theUnited Nations. Otlet designed theUniversal Decimal Classification, based onMelville Dewey's decimal classification system.[33]
Although he lived decades before computers and networks emerged, what he discussed prefigured what ultimately became theWorld Wide Web. His vision of a great network ofknowledge focused ondocuments and included the notions ofhyperlinks,search engines, remote access, andsocial 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.[33]By 1937 documentation had formally been institutionalized, as evidenced by the founding of the American Documentation Institute (ADI), later called theAmerican Society for Information Science and Technology.
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 other programs. They further made themselves multidisciplinary by incorporating disciplines in the sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as other professional programs, such aslaw andmedicine in their curriculum.
Among the individuals who had distinct opportunities to facilitate interdisciplinary activity targeted at scientific communication wasFoster E. Mohrhardt, director of theNational Agricultural Library from 1954 to 1968.[34]
By the 1980s, large databases, such asGrateful Med at theNational Library of Medicine, and user-oriented services such asDialog andCompuserve, were for the first time accessible by individuals from their personal computers. The 1980s also saw the emergence of numerousspecial 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.[35]
Dissemination has historically been interpreted as unilateral communication of information. With the advent of theinternet, and the explosion in popularity ofonline communities,social media has changed the information landscape in many respects, and creates both new modes of communication and new types of information",[36] changing the interpretation of the definition of dissemination. The nature of social networks allows for faster diffusion of information than through organizational sources.[37] The internet has changed the way we view, use, create, and store information; now it is time to re-evaluate the way we share and spread it.
Social media networks provide an open information environment for the mass of people who have limited time or access to traditional outlets of information diffusion,[37] this is an "increasingly mobile and social world [that] demands...new types of information skills".[36] Social media integration as an access point is a very useful and mutually beneficial tool for users and providers. All major news providers have visibility and an access point through networks such asFacebook andTwitter maximizing their breadth of audience. Through social media people are directed to, or provided with, information by people they know. The ability to "share, like, and comment on...content"[38] increases the reach farther and wider than traditional methods. People like to interact with information, they enjoy including the people they know in their circle of knowledge. Sharing through social media has become so influential that publishers must "play nice" if they desire to succeed. Although, it is often mutually beneficial for publishers and Facebook to "share, promote and uncover new content"[38] to improve both user base experiences. The impact of popular opinion can spread in unimaginable ways. Social media allows interaction through simple to learn and access tools;The Wall Street Journal offers an app through Facebook, andThe Washington Post goes a step further and offers an independent social app that was downloaded by 19.5 million users in six months,[38] proving how interested people are in the new way of being provided information.
The connections and networks sustained through social media help information providers learn what is important to people. The connections people have throughout the world enable the exchange of information at an unprecedented rate. It is for this reason that these networks have been realized for the potential they provide. "Most news media monitor Twitter for breaking news",[37] as well as news anchors frequently request the audience to tweet pictures of events.[38] The users and viewers of the shared information have earned "opinion-making and agenda-setting power".[37] This channel has been recognized for the usefulness of providing targeted information based on public demand.
The following areas are some of those that information science investigates and develops.
Information access is an area of research at the intersection ofInformatics, Information Science,Information Security,Language Technology, andComputer Science. The objectives of information access research are to automate the processing of large and unwieldy amounts of information and to simplify users' access to it. What about assigning privileges and restricting access to unauthorized users? The extent of access should be defined in the level of clearance granted for the information. Applicable technologies includeinformation retrieval,text mining,text editing,machine translation, andtext categorisation. In discussion, information access is often defined as concerning the insurance of free and closed or public access to information and is brought up in discussions oncopyright,patent law, andpublic domain. Public libraries need resources to provide knowledge of information assurance.
Information architecture (IA) is the art and science of organizing and labellingwebsites,intranets,online communities and software to support usability.[39] It is an emerging discipline andcommunity of practice focused on bringing together principles ofdesign andarchitecture to thedigital landscape.[40] Typically it involves amodel orconcept ofinformation which is used and applied to activities that require explicit details of complexinformation systems. These activities includelibrary systems anddatabase development.
Information management (IM) is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in, or a right to that information. Management means the organization of and control over the structure, processing and delivery of information. Throughout the 1970s this was largely limited to files, file maintenance, and the life cycle management of paper-based files, other media and records. With the proliferation of information technology starting in the 1970s, the job of information management took on a new light and also began to include the field of data maintenance.
Information retrieval (IR) is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, forinformation within documents, and formetadata about documents, as well as that of searchingstructured storage,relational databases, and theWorld Wide Web. Automated information retrieval systems are used to reduce what has been called "information overload". Many universities andpublic libraries use IR systems to provide access to books, journals and other documents.Web search engines are the most visibleIR applications.
An information retrieval process begins when a user enters aquery into the system. Queries are formal statements ofinformation needs, for example search strings in web search engines. In information retrieval a query does not uniquely identify a single object in the collection. Instead, several objects may match the query, perhaps with different degrees ofrelevancy.
An object is an entity that is represented by information in adatabase. User queries are matched against the database information. Depending on theapplication the data objects may be, for example, text documents, images,[41] audio,[42]mind maps[43] or videos. Often the documents themselves are not kept or stored directly in the IR system, but are instead represented in the system by document surrogates or metadata.
Most IR systems compute a numeric score on how well each object in the database match the query, and rank the objects according to this value. The top ranking objects are then shown to the user. The process may then be iterated if the user wishes to refine the query.[44]
Information seeking is the process or activity of attempting to obtain information in both human and technological contexts. Information seeking is related to, but different from, information retrieval (IR).
Much library and information science (LIS) research has focused on the information-seeking practices of practitioners within various fields of professional work. Studies have been carried out into the information-seeking behaviors of librarians,[45] academics,[46] medical professionals,[47] engineers[48] and lawyers[49] (among others). Much of this research has drawn on the work done by Leckie, Pettigrew (now Fisher) and Sylvain, who in 1996 conducted an extensive review of the LIS literature (as well as the literature of other academic fields) on professionals' information seeking. The authors proposed an analytic model of professionals' information seeking behaviour, intended to be generalizable across the professions, thus providing a platform for future research in the area. The model was intended to "prompt new insights... and give rise to more refined and applicable theories of information seeking" (Leckie, Pettigrew & Sylvain 1996, p. 188). The model has been adapted byWilkinson (2001) who proposes a model of the information seeking of lawyers. Recent studies in this topic address the concept of information-gathering that "provides a broader perspective that adheres better to professionals' work-related reality and desired skills."[50] (Solomon & Bronstein 2021).
An information society is asociety where the creation, distribution, diffusion, uses, integration and manipulation ofinformation is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. The aim of an information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally, through usingIT in a creative and productive way. Theknowledge economy is its economic counterpart, whereby wealth is created through the economic exploitation of understanding. People who have the means to partake in this form of society are sometimes calleddigital citizens.
Basically, an information society is the means of getting information from one place to another (Wark 1997, p. 22). As technology has become more advanced over time so too has the way we have adapted in sharing this information with each other.
Information society theory discusses the role of information and information technology in society, the question of which key concepts should be used for characterizing contemporary society, and how to define such concepts. It has become a specific branch of contemporary sociology.
Knowledge representation (KR) is an area ofartificial intelligence research aimed at representing knowledge in symbols to facilitateinferencing from thoseknowledge elements, creating new elements of knowledge. The KR can be made to be independent of the underlying knowledge model or knowledge base system (KBS) such as asemantic network.[51]
Knowledge Representation (KR) research involves analysis of how to reason accurately and effectively and how best to use a set of symbols to represent a set of facts within a knowledge domain. A symbol vocabulary and a system of logic are combined to enableinferences about elements in the KR to create new KR sentences. Logic is used to supply formalsemantics of how reasoning functions should be applied to the symbols in the KR system. Logic is also used to define how operators can process and reshape the knowledge. Examples of operators and operations include, negation, conjunction, adverbs, adjectives, quantifiers and modal operators. The logic is interpretation theory. These elements—symbols, operators, and interpretation theory—are what give sequences of symbols meaning within a KR.
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