Library and information science
Encyclopedia
Library and information science (LIS) (sometimes in plural: library and information sciences) is a merging of the two fields library science
and information science
. It is associated with schools of library and information science (abbreviated to "SLIS"), which generally developed from professional schools to research based university institutions during the second half of the twentieth century. In the last part of 1960s schools of librarianship began to add the term "information science" to their names. The first school to do this was at the University of Pittsburgh in 1964. More schools followed during the 1970s and 1980s and during the 1990s almost all library schools in the USA had added information science to their names. A similar development has taken place in large parts of the world. In Denmark, for example, the 'Royal School of Librarianship' in 1997 changed its English name to The Royal School of Library and Information Science. Another indication of this name shift is that Library Science Abstracts in 1969 changed its name to Library and Information Science Abstracts
. In spite of this merge are the two original disciplines (library science
and information science
) still by some considered as separate fields while the main tendency today is to use the terms as synonym
s, but with different connotation
s.
In some parts of the world the development has been somewhat different. In France, for example, information science and communication studies form one interdiscipline
. In Tromsö, Norway documentation science
is preferred as the name of the field.
In the beginning of the 21st century one tendency is to drop the term "library" and to speak about information departments or I-school
s. There has also been an attempt to revive the concept of documentation
and speak of Library, information and documentation studies (or science). Another tendency, for example in Sweden, is to merge the fields of Archival science
, Library science
and Museology
to develop an integrated field: Archival, Library and Museum studies.
Another indication of the different uses of the two terms are the indexing in UMI's Dissertations Abstracts
. In Dissertations Abstracts Online on November 2011 were 4888 dissertations indexed with the descriptor LIBRARY SCIENCE and 9053 with the descriptor INFORMATION SCIENCE. For the year 2009 the numbers were 104 LIBRARY SCIENCE and 514 INFORMATION SCIENCE. 891 dissertations were indexed with both terms (36 in 2009).
It should be considered that information science grew out of documentation science
and therefore has a tradition for considering scientific and scholarly communication, bibliographic database
s, subject knowledge and terminology etc. Library science, on the other hand has mostly concentrated on libraries and their internal processes and best practices. It is also relevant to consider that information science used to be done by scientists, while librarianship has been split between public libraries and scholarly research libraries. Library schools have mainly educated librarians for public libraries and not shown much interest in scientific communication and documentation. When information scientists from 1964 entered library schools, they brought with them competencies in relation to information retrieval in subject databases, including concepts such as recall and precision, boolean search techniques, query formulation and related issues. Subject bibliographic databases and citation indexes provided a major step forward in information dissemination - and also in the curriculum at library schools.
Julian Warner (2010) suggests that the information and computer science tradition in information retrieval
may broadly be characterized as query transformation, with the query articulated verbally by the user in advance of searching and then transformed by a system into a set of records. From librarianship and indexing, on the other hand, has been an implicit stress on selection power enabling the user to make relevant selections.
"Throughout the findings reported here (Part III) is a troubling thread: that conceptual confusion among LIS writers and service providers is attributable, in part, to poor terminological hygiene." (Konrad, 2007, p. 683).
What is described here is a view of social fields as dynamic and changing. Library and information science is viewed as a field that started as a multidisciplinary field based on literature, psychology, sociology, management, computer science etc., which is developing towards an academic discipline
in its own right. However, the following quote seems to indicate that LIS is actually developing in the opposite direction:
Chua & Yang (2008) Chua, A. & Yang, C.C. (2008). The shift towards multi-disciplinarity in information science, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(13), 2156 – 2170. studied papers published in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology in the period 1988-1997 and found, among other things: "Top authors have grown in diversity from those being affiliated predominantly with library/information-related departments to include those from information systems management, information technology, business, and the humanities. Amid heterogeneous clusters of collaboration among top authors, strongly connected crossdisciplinary
coauthor pairs have become more prevalent. Correspondingly, the distribution of top keywords’ occurrences that leans heavily on core information science has shifted towards other subdisciplines such as information technology and sociobehavioral science."
As a field with its own body of interrelated concepts, techniques, journals, and professional associations, LIS is clearly a discipline. But by the nature of its subject matter and methods LIS is just as clearly an interdiscipline
, drawing on many adjacent fields (see below).
"The unique concern of LIS is recognized as: Statement of the core concern of LIS:
Humans becoming informed (constructing meaning) via intermediation between inquirers and instrumented records. No other field has this as its concern. " (Konrad, 2007, p. 660)
"Note that the promiscuous term information does not appear in the above statement circumscribing the field's central concerns: The detrimental effects of the ambiguity this term provokes are discussed above (Part III). Furner [Furner 2004, 427] has shown that discourse in the field is improved where specific terms are utilized in place of the i-word for specific senses of that term." (Konrad, 2007, p. 661).
Michael Buckland wrote: "Educational programs in library, information and documentation are concerned with what people know, are not limited to technology, and require wide-ranging expertise. They differ fundamentally and importantly from computer science programs and from the information systems programs found in business schools." .
The domain analytic approach (e.g., Hjørland 2010) suggests that the relevant criteria for making discriminations in information retrieval are scientific and scholarly criteria. In some fields (e.g. evidence based medicine the relevant distinctions are very explicit. In other cases they are implicit or unclear. At the basic level, the relevance of bibliographical records are determined by epistemological criteria of what constitutes knowledge.
Among other approaches should Evidence Based Library and Information Practice
also be mentioned.
Some core journals in LIS are:
(see also Category:Library science journals and Journal Citation Reports
for listing according to Impact factor
)
Important bibliographical databases in LIS are, among others, Social Sciences Citation Index
and Library and Information Science Abstracts
Consider, however, that according to Chua & Yang (2008) the relative number of articles in JASIST from LIS decreased from 61.3% (38 papers)in the period 1988–1997 to 47.7% (73 papers) in the period 1998–2007. This is an indication 1) that journals publish papers from different fields 2) that journals (as well as fields) may change over time so the core journals in a field cannot be uses as indicators of the development in the field without taking this into account.
Library science
Library science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...
and information science
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
. It is associated with schools of library and information science (abbreviated to "SLIS"), which generally developed from professional schools to research based university institutions during the second half of the twentieth century. In the last part of 1960s schools of librarianship began to add the term "information science" to their names. The first school to do this was at the University of Pittsburgh in 1964. More schools followed during the 1970s and 1980s and during the 1990s almost all library schools in the USA had added information science to their names. A similar development has taken place in large parts of the world. In Denmark, for example, the 'Royal School of Librarianship' in 1997 changed its English name to The Royal School of Library and Information Science. Another indication of this name shift is that Library Science Abstracts in 1969 changed its name to Library and Information Science Abstracts
Library and Information Science Abstracts
Library and Information Science Abstracts, is an international abstracting and indexing tool designed for library professionals and other information specialists....
. In spite of this merge are the two original disciplines (library science
Library science
Library science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...
and information science
Information science
-Introduction:Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information...
) still by some considered as separate fields while the main tendency today is to use the terms as synonym
Synonym
Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...
s, but with different connotation
Connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood subjective cultural or emotional association that some word or phrase carries, in addition to the word's or phrase's explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation....
s.
In some parts of the world the development has been somewhat different. In France, for example, information science and communication studies form one interdiscipline
Interdiscipline
The term interdiscipline or inter-discipline means a course of study or an organizational unit that involves two or more academic disciplines. As shown in the example of demography below a field may be both a discipline and an interdiscipline at the same time...
. In Tromsö, Norway documentation science
Documentation science
-Introduction:Documentation science, documentation studies or just documentation is a field of study and a profession founded by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine . Professionals educated in this field are termed documentalists...
is preferred as the name of the field.
In the beginning of the 21st century one tendency is to drop the term "library" and to speak about information departments or I-school
I-school
An information school, I-School or iSchool is an emergent label of university departments or independent institutions committed to understanding the role of information in nature and human endeavors. It is a more restricted term than just "school of information" because I-schools join together in...
s. There has also been an attempt to revive the concept of documentation
Documentation
Documentation is a term used in several different ways. Generally, documentation refers to the process of providing evidence.Modules of Documentation are Helpful...
and speak of Library, information and documentation studies (or science). Another tendency, for example in Sweden, is to merge the fields of Archival science
Archival science
Archival science is the theory and study of storing, cataloguing, and retrieving documents and items. Archival science evolved from mankind's need to classify the world around them...
, Library science
Library science
Library science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...
and Museology
Museology
Museology is the diachronic study of museums and how they have established and developed in their role as an educational mechanism under social and political pressures.-Overview:...
to develop an integrated field: Archival, Library and Museum studies.
Relations between library science, information science and LIS
Tefko Saracevic (1992, p. 13) argued that library science and information science are separate fields:- "The common ground between library science and information science, which is a strong one, is in the sharing of their social role and in their general concern with the problems of effective utilization of graphic records. But there are also very significant differences in several critical respects, among them in: (1) selection of problems addressed and in the way they were defined; (2) theoretical questions asked and frameworks established;(3) the nature and degree of experimentation and empirical development and the resulting practical knowledge/competencies derived; (4) tools and approaches used; and (5) the nature and strength of interdisciplinary relations established and the dependence of the progress and evolution of interdisciplinary approaches. All of these differences warrant the conclusion that librarianship and information science are two different fields in a strong interdisciplinary relation, rather than one and the same field, or one being a special case of the other."
Another indication of the different uses of the two terms are the indexing in UMI's Dissertations Abstracts
Dissertations Abstracts
Dissertation Abstracts, Dissertation Abstracts International or the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database is a bibliography of American dissertations published by University Microfilms International / ProQuest, Ann Arbor, since 1938...
. In Dissertations Abstracts Online on November 2011 were 4888 dissertations indexed with the descriptor LIBRARY SCIENCE and 9053 with the descriptor INFORMATION SCIENCE. For the year 2009 the numbers were 104 LIBRARY SCIENCE and 514 INFORMATION SCIENCE. 891 dissertations were indexed with both terms (36 in 2009).
It should be considered that information science grew out of documentation science
Documentation science
-Introduction:Documentation science, documentation studies or just documentation is a field of study and a profession founded by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine . Professionals educated in this field are termed documentalists...
and therefore has a tradition for considering scientific and scholarly communication, bibliographic database
Bibliographic database
A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records, an organized digital collection of references to published literature, including journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications, patents, books, etc...
s, subject knowledge and terminology etc. Library science, on the other hand has mostly concentrated on libraries and their internal processes and best practices. It is also relevant to consider that information science used to be done by scientists, while librarianship has been split between public libraries and scholarly research libraries. Library schools have mainly educated librarians for public libraries and not shown much interest in scientific communication and documentation. When information scientists from 1964 entered library schools, they brought with them competencies in relation to information retrieval in subject databases, including concepts such as recall and precision, boolean search techniques, query formulation and related issues. Subject bibliographic databases and citation indexes provided a major step forward in information dissemination - and also in the curriculum at library schools.
Julian Warner (2010) suggests that the information and computer science tradition in information retrieval
Information retrieval
Information retrieval is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web...
may broadly be characterized as query transformation, with the query articulated verbally by the user in advance of searching and then transformed by a system into a set of records. From librarianship and indexing, on the other hand, has been an implicit stress on selection power enabling the user to make relevant selections.
Difficulties defining LIS
"The question, "What is library and information science?" does not elicit responses of the same internal conceptual coherence as similar inquiries as to the nature of other fields, e.g., "What is chemistry?", "What is economics?", "What is medicine?" Each of those fields, though broad in scope, has clear ties to basic concerns of their field. [...] Neither LIS theory nor practice is perceived to be monolithic nor unified by a common literature or set of professional skills. Occasionally, LIS scholars (many of whom do not self-identify as members of an interreading LIS community, or prefer names other than LIS), attempt, but are unable, to find core concepts in common. Some believe that computing and internetworking concepts and skills underlie virtually every important aspect of LIS, indeed see LIS as a sub-field of computer science! [Footnote III.1] Others claim that LIS is principally a social science accompanied by practical skills such as ethnography and interviewing. Historically, traditions of public service, bibliography, documentalism, and information science have viewed their mission, their philosophical toolsets, and their domain of research differently. Still others deny the existence of a greater metropolitan LIS, viewing LIS instead as a loosely organized collection of specialized interests often unified by nothing more than their shared (and fought-over) use of the descriptor information. Indeed, claims occasionally arise to the effect that the field even has no theory of its own. " (Konrad, 2007, p. 652-653).Poor terminological hygiene
"Throughout the findings reported here (Part III) is a troubling thread: that conceptual confusion among LIS writers and service providers is attributable, in part, to poor terminological hygiene." (Konrad, 2007, p. 683).
A multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary or monodisciplinary field?
The Swedish researcher Emin Tengström (1993). described cross-disciplinary research as a process, not a state or structure. He differentiates three levels of ambition regarding cross-disciplinary research:- The ”Pluridisciplinary” or ”multidisciplinarityMultidisciplinarityMultidisciplinarity is a non-integrative mixture of disciplines in that each discipline retains its methodologies and assumptions without change or development from other disciplines within the multidisciplinary relationship....
” level - The genuine cross-disciplinary level: ”interdisciplinarityInterdisciplinarityInterdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
” - The discipline-forming level ”transdisciplinarityTransdisciplinarityTransdisciplinarity connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines, such as research on effective information systems for biomedical...
”
What is described here is a view of social fields as dynamic and changing. Library and information science is viewed as a field that started as a multidisciplinary field based on literature, psychology, sociology, management, computer science etc., which is developing towards an academic discipline
Academic discipline
An academic discipline, or field of study, is a branch of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined , and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties to...
in its own right. However, the following quote seems to indicate that LIS is actually developing in the opposite direction:
Chua & Yang (2008) Chua, A. & Yang, C.C. (2008). The shift towards multi-disciplinarity in information science, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(13), 2156 – 2170. studied papers published in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology in the period 1988-1997 and found, among other things: "Top authors have grown in diversity from those being affiliated predominantly with library/information-related departments to include those from information systems management, information technology, business, and the humanities. Amid heterogeneous clusters of collaboration among top authors, strongly connected crossdisciplinary
coauthor pairs have become more prevalent. Correspondingly, the distribution of top keywords’ occurrences that leans heavily on core information science has shifted towards other subdisciplines such as information technology and sociobehavioral science."
As a field with its own body of interrelated concepts, techniques, journals, and professional associations, LIS is clearly a discipline. But by the nature of its subject matter and methods LIS is just as clearly an interdiscipline
Interdiscipline
The term interdiscipline or inter-discipline means a course of study or an organizational unit that involves two or more academic disciplines. As shown in the example of demography below a field may be both a discipline and an interdiscipline at the same time...
, drawing on many adjacent fields (see below).
A fragmented adhocracy
Richard Whitley (1984, 2000) classified scientific fields according to their intellectual and social organization and described management studies as a ‘fragmented adhocracy’, a field with a low level of coordination around a diffuse set of goals and a non-specialized terminology; but with strong connections to the practice in the business sector. Åström (2006) applied this conception to the description of LIS.What is the unique concern of library and information science?
"Concern for people becoming informed is not unique to LIS, and thus is insufficient to differentiate LIS from other fields. LIS are a part of a larger enterprise." (Konrad, 2007, p. 655)."The unique concern of LIS is recognized as: Statement of the core concern of LIS:
Humans becoming informed (constructing meaning) via intermediation between inquirers and instrumented records. No other field has this as its concern. " (Konrad, 2007, p. 660)
"Note that the promiscuous term information does not appear in the above statement circumscribing the field's central concerns: The detrimental effects of the ambiguity this term provokes are discussed above (Part III). Furner [Furner 2004, 427] has shown that discourse in the field is improved where specific terms are utilized in place of the i-word for specific senses of that term." (Konrad, 2007, p. 661).
Michael Buckland wrote: "Educational programs in library, information and documentation are concerned with what people know, are not limited to technology, and require wide-ranging expertise. They differ fundamentally and importantly from computer science programs and from the information systems programs found in business schools." .
Theories, approaches and "paradigms" in LIS
Julian Warner (2010, p. 4-5) suggests that- "Two paradigms, the cognitive and the physical, have been distinguished in information retrieval research, but they share the assumption of the value of delivering relevant records (Ellis 1984, 19; Belkin and Vickery 1985, 114). For the purpose of discussion here, they can be considered a single heterogeneous paradigm, linked but not united by this common assumption. The value placed on query transformation is dissonant with common practice, where users may prefer to explore an area and may value fully informed exploration. Some dissenting research discussions have been more congruent with practice, advocating explorative capability - the ability to explore and make discriminations between representations of objects - as the fundamental design principle for information retrieval systems".
The domain analytic approach (e.g., Hjørland 2010) suggests that the relevant criteria for making discriminations in information retrieval are scientific and scholarly criteria. In some fields (e.g. evidence based medicine the relevant distinctions are very explicit. In other cases they are implicit or unclear. At the basic level, the relevance of bibliographical records are determined by epistemological criteria of what constitutes knowledge.
Among other approaches should Evidence Based Library and Information Practice
Evidence based library and information practice
Evidence Based Library and Information Practice or evidence based librarianship is the application of the interdisciplinary approach known as evidence-based practice to problems in the field of library and information science...
also be mentioned.
Core journals
One way to identify a research fields it to identify its core journals. (There is of course some circularity involved here: In order to identify the journals you must know the field and in order to know the field you must know the knowledge produced in the field, in particular in the research journals).Some core journals in LIS are:
- Annual Review of Information Science and TechnologyAnnual Review of Information Science and TechnologyThe Annual Review of Information Science and Technology was an annual review journal published from 1966 to 2011. It was established in 1965 by the American Documentation Institute and the National Science Foundation. It published review articles rather than empirical research articles. It's last ...
(ARIST) (1966-2011) - Information Processing and ManagementInformation Processing and ManagementInformation Processing and Management is a peer-reviewed academic journal,It was founded as Information Storage and Retrieval in 1963; in 1975 it changed its name to the present one....
- Information Research: An international electronic journal (IR) (1995-)
- Journal of DocumentationJournal of DocumentationThe Journal of Documentation is a double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal covering theories, concepts, models, frameworks, and philosophies in information science...
(JDoc) (1945-) - Journal of Information ScienceJournal of Information ScienceThe Journal of Information Science is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on information science, information management and some aspects of knowledge management.- Publication history :...
(JIS) (1979-) - Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) (1950-)
- Knowledge Organization (journal)Knowledge Organization (journal)Knowledge Organization is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering concept theory, classification, indexing, and knowledge representation. It is the official journal of the International Society for Knowledge Organization. It was established in 1973 as International Classification and...
- The Library QuarterlyThe Library QuarterlyThe Library Quarterly is an academic journal published quarterly by the University of Chicago on subjects in library science, including historical, sociological, statistical, bibliographical, managerial, psychological, and educational aspects of the field. It was established to fill a need for...
(LQ) (1931-) - Library TrendsLibrary TrendsLibrary Trends is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal founded in 1952 and published quarterly by the Johns Hopkins University Press. It covers international developments and future directions in the fields of library and information science. It includes analysis of research and writing,...
(1952-) - Scientometrics (journal)Scientometrics (journal)Scientometrics is a peer reviewed journal in the field of scientometrics. It is currently published by Akadémiai Kiadó and Springer Science+Business Media and has appeared continuously since 1978....
(1978-)
(see also Category:Library science journals and Journal Citation Reports
Journal Citation Reports
Journal Citation Reports is an annual publication by the Healthcare & Science division of Thomson Reuters. It has been integrated with the Web of Knowledge, by Thomson Reuters, and is accessed from the Web of Science to JCR Web. It provides information about academic journals in the sciences and...
for listing according to Impact factor
Impact factor
The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...
)
Important bibliographical databases in LIS are, among others, Social Sciences Citation Index
Social Sciences Citation Index
Social Sciences Citation Index is an interdisciplinary citation index product of Thomson Reuters' Healthcare & Science division. It was developed by the Institute for Scientific Information from the Science Citation Index....
and Library and Information Science Abstracts
Library and Information Science Abstracts
Library and Information Science Abstracts, is an international abstracting and indexing tool designed for library professionals and other information specialists....
Consider, however, that according to Chua & Yang (2008) the relative number of articles in JASIST from LIS decreased from 61.3% (38 papers)in the period 1988–1997 to 47.7% (73 papers) in the period 1998–2007. This is an indication 1) that journals publish papers from different fields 2) that journals (as well as fields) may change over time so the core journals in a field cannot be uses as indicators of the development in the field without taking this into account.