What is (are) Information Studies?

Abstract

What are library and information science, information science, and information studies? Science involves rigorously articulated methodological activity that leads to the observation of phenomena. For most of the twentieth century library and information studies took place in the context of fields known variously as library science, information science, later as library and information science, then as information studies, and only recently as simply information itself. But this sequence of names reveals an evolution as well. In the first decades of the twentieth century, a new movement began to dub certain grant-endowed and technologically focused schools as “iSchools.” The field of information (or information studies) commonly is acknowledged to consist of several interlocking sub-disciplines, each of which has developed its own tools and principles, and in some of which theory is beginning to emerge. “Information,” of “Information Studies,” is an emerging discipline that has evolved from the convergence of librarianship and information as a science with other components of cognitive science. Rigorous scientific research has begun to yield a small base of theoretical knowledge as well, particularly into the essential properties of information (the process) and its carriers (knowledge artifacts and systems that organize and provide access to them). The discipline is itself a synergistic force because the object of our research is knowledge itself, and its potential as information; the role of the field is to isolate and define a shared base of principles that inform the information professions.