Department of Information Science, City University London, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to derive a conceptual model for information science, which isboth academically sound and practically useful, particularly for curriculum design.
Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of a conceptual analysis, based onan extensive literature review, going back to the earliest days of information science.
Findings – A conceptual model is derived, based on the study of components of the informationchain through approaches of domain analysis, plus “fringe” topics and a meta-level consideration ofthe discipline itself. Links to related subjects may be derived systematically from this model.
Originality/value – This is the first paper to suggest that a useful model for information science canbe derived, based on the idea of studying the communication chain by means of domain analysis.
Keywords Information science, Curriculum development, Knowledge processes, Knowledge mapping
Paper type Conceptual paper
Introduction
Apparently, there is not a uniform conception of information science. The field seems tofollow different approaches and traditions: for example, objective approaches versuscognitive approaches, and the library tradition versus the documentation tradition versus thecomputation tradition. The concept has different meanings, which imply different knowledgedomains. Different knowledge domains imply different fields. Nevertheless, all of them arerepresented by the same name, information science. No wonder that scholars, practitionersand students are confused (Chaim Zins, 2007a).
This paper presents a suggestion for a conceptual model of information science, basedon the combination of a rather traditional idea (the “information chain”) with a moremodern development (“domain analysis”).
OriginsInformation science first became known as a discipline during the 1950s. Shapiro(1995) identifies the first usage of the term in a paper by Jason Farradane (1955), inwhich it is stated that contemporary British academic and professional qualificationswere “.. a pattern for establishing qualifications in documentation, or ’informationscience’”. This, Shapiro points out, follows from earlier uses by Farradane of the term“information scientist”, to mean initially a specialist in the handling of scientific andtechnical information.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
The author is very grateful to Birger Hjørland for insightful comments on a draft of this article.
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Received 2 September 2008Revised 16 September 2008Accepted 16 September 2008
Journal of DocumentationVol. 65 No. 4, 2009pp. 578-591q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0022-0418DOI 10.1108/00220410910970267
This places the information science discipline as an extension of the earlier conceptof “documentation”, denoting a “scientific” approach to the storage and retrieval ofrecorded information. However, alongside the influential documentation movement,other influences certainly underlay the birth of information science; see, for example,Harmon (1971), Shera and Cleveland (1977), Shera (1982), Schrader (1984), Herner(1984), Rayward (1985), Meadows (1987), Ingwersen (1992), Buckland (1996), Saracevic(1992, 1999), Webber (2003), Black et al. (2007), and Rayward (2008). These included:
. the increased awareness of technical information as a resource forresearch-based industries;
. the need to deal with the “information explosion”;
. the very rapid expansion in publications of all kinds dealing particularly withscientific and technical information during and after the 1939-1945 war;
. the growing application of new technologies to information handling,exemplified by Vannevar Bush’s early and influential Memex concept; and
. the development of Shannon-Weaver Information Theory, the firstmathematical, and hence “scientific”, treatment of information.
Given these various influences on its formation, it is not surprising that, since its earliestdays, there has been some dispute as to what kind of discipline information science is.
What kind of discipline?It is clear that, from the time of Farradane’s earliest usage of the term, there was a lackof clarity about information science,and information scientists (Shapiro, 1995; Bawden,2008). Was the concern with the “information of science”, i.e. the practicalities of thehandling of scientific and technical information, or with the “science of information”,i.e. the academic study of information phenomena ? This disparity of view has neverreally been settled, Meadows (1990) noting the extension of information science theoryagainst a prevailing view of the subject as severely practical. It still clouds discussionsof the place of practice and theory in the library and information science curriculum(Grogan, 2007). In essence, it is the question of whether information science is adiscipline, or a practical art.
Farradane (1976) argued strongly for the former, for a “true information science”,and not an “applied multidisciplinary art”, insisting on a scientific basis by precisedefinition of its entities and processes. Later, Farradane (1980) asserted that this mustbe a cognitive science, requiring careful experimental study to identify measures,errors and controls; a strongly positivist and behaviourist approach. Other earlyapproaches to defining information science are reviewed by Harmon (1971), generallyas a applied science, though with very varied premises and nature; see also Rosenberg(1974). Brookes (1980) claimed to have found a niche for such an information science,unclaimed by any other discipline, in the exploration of the world of objectiveknowledge, a distinct extension from the concerns of documentation and librarianship.Sadly for these grand visions, Heilprin (1989) concluded that:
[. . .] although many laws, hypotheses, and speculations about information have beenproposed, adequate scientific and epistemic foundations for a general science of informationhave not yet appeared.
The same may be said to be true nearly two decades later (Bawden, 2008).
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This has not stopped a good deal of comment during this time about what sort ofdiscipline information science is, or should be; see Webber (2003) and Hawkins (2001)for overviews. Perhaps as a reaction to its foundations in scientific information, therehave been repeated arguments that it is a social science (Roberts, 1976; Wersig andWindell, 1985; Dick, 1995; Cronin, 2008). Perhaps because of its very lack of generallaws, it has also been proposed as a “meta-science” (Bates, 1999; Mezick and Koenig,2008), an “inter-science” (McGuirk, 2002; De Beer, 2005), a “postmodern” science(Wersig, 1992), an “interface” science (Maricic, 1987), a “superior” science (Curras,1985), a “rhetorical” science (Capurro, 1992), a “nomad” science (De Beer, 2005), a“liberal art” (Arms, 2005), an interdisciplinary subject which should be renamed“knowledge science (Zins, 2006), and a subject which may assume the role once playedby philosophy in mediating science and humanism (Schoenly, 1983).
Another issue which has clung to the information science discipline since itsinception has been its relations with closely related subjects, most notably withlibrarianship and with computer science (Machlup and Mansfield, 1983; Saracevic,1992). In particular, the relation between information science and librarianship hasbeen continually at issue (Hawkins, 2001). Brookes, as noted above, wished todistinguish the subjects clearly, as did Shera (1982), arguing that information sciencewas an area of inquiry and research, whereas librarianship was a service and practice.Other views have been different: that, for example, there is no difference (Houser, 1988),that they are distinct but inter-dependent (Daniel, 1985; Miksa, 1985; Saracevic, 1999;Budd, 2008), that they are distinct but have naturally linked education systems(Rowley, 1983), and that they are best seen as a composite “library and informationscience” discipline (Vakkari, 1994; Hjørland, 2000; Dillon, 2007).
Finally, we may note that concerns about the viability of the information sciencediscipline, whatever it may be, have been raised almost since its inception. Foskett (1973)was contemplating the educational implications of an “emergent” discipline, but threeyears earlier Goffman (1970) was pondering its possible disappearance. Warner (2001)regarded it as “being in crisis as a discipline”, while Collier et al. (2008), followingMeadows (2008), were contemplating the idea that it might be a “waning discipline”,though with a considerable intellectual legacy. The reasons for this are numerous, and gowell beyond the lack of any extensive and accepted theory base. They includeparticularly the “intrusion” of other disciplines – Meadows (2008) particularly identifiescomputer scientists, and management and business researchers – into what wereregarded as the “territory” of information science, so that most important developmentsin information technology and the information society happened with little evidentinformation science input. Dillon (2007) regrets that although the questions central tolibrary/information science are of great interest to society, the answers are not usuallysought from the LIS community. Also, we might note the tendency of informationscientists to “claim” skills and topics which either disappeared or were devolved toothers; the online intermediary role, the introduction and management of databasesystems for text retrieval, and knowledge management, to name but three.
We must therefore conclude that there is still no very clear understanding of whatthe information science discipline is, what it is for, what its content and focus ofinterest should be, and what its methods are. Indeed, this confusion, which has existedsince its earliest days, shows no sign of easing.
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A field focused on information?It is evident, perhaps self-evident, to note that all of the variant definitions andexplanations of the information science discipline have centred on the idea ofinformation. Even those variants which prefer to focus on “documents” or on“messages” have to do so on the basis that these entities in some way carry orencapsulate information.
Zins (2007a) presents the latest and most thorough survey of this point, based on aDelphi study, reporting 50 explanations and definitions of information science. Some areunhelpfully circular – “information science is what information scientists do” – whileothers are unnecessarily polemic – “..information science is a self-serving attempt toennoble what used to be called library science”. Some are so broad as to be of limited use– “information science is the totality of the process of communication andunderstanding, both intra- and inter-personally”’ – while others seem rather toorestrictive – “information science is a mathematical discipline that studies technologicalways of conveying information”. While all of them do have information, or somesurrogate, at their centre, it seems difficult to see how they, or any similar collection ofexpert views, may be fitted into a single definition or paradigm.
One way of accommodating divergent approaches to the subject within a coherentframework is to regard information science as a “field of study”, in the sense of thephrase recommended by Paul Hirst, the philosopher of education (Hirst, 1974). This isan alternative to “disciplines” based on a unique form of knowledge, such asmathematics or the physical sciences, and to “practical disciplines” based on one of theforms of knowledge but oriented to solving practical problems, such as engineering ormedicine. For Hirst, a field of study is focused on a topic or subject of interest, usingany of the forms of knowledge which may be helpful in studying it. Bawden (2007a)argues that it may be appropriate to regard information science as such a field of study,focused on the topic of information. In order to keep the subject within sensible bounds,and also to satisfy those who prefer to regard it as document-centred ormessage-centred, the focus is restricted to recorded information, produced and usedby humans, as is also suggested by Bates (1999). Information science is thenunderstood as “a multidisciplinary field of study, involving several forms ofknowledge, given coherence by a focus on the central concept of human recordedinformation” (Bawden, 2007a). There is some resonance here with the early insistenceof Machlup and Mansfield (1983) that the field should be described as the informationsciences, emphasising the plural, to show the breadth of approach needed.
This way of understanding information science seems to encompass all the variationsdiscussed above, at the expense of offending those who, on the one hand, prefer to restrictthe discipline entirely to a formal and quantitative study of messages, and those who, onthe other, wish to suggest that it is “only” librarianship by another name.
While this seems satisfactory as a very general understanding of the nature of thebroad discipline, it says nothing in detail about what the discipline studies, leaving it ina rather incoherent state, and making it difficult to compare different approaches toeducation and research for information science. Something more is needed to givegreater specificity and clarity about the nature of the “human recorded information”.This is provided by a rather “traditional” concept within information science: the“information chain”.
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The information chainMany accounts and explanations of information science from the 1960s onwards havefocused on the idea of the “information chain” or “information life cycle”; the sequenceof processes by which recorded information is communicated from author to user. AsMeadows (1991) points out, there are a number of variations of this chain, according tothe type of information and information-bearing entities involved. But typically, thechain has been described as having components such as:
. creation;
. dissemination;
. organisation;
. indexing;
. storage; and
. use.
A number of relatively early formulations of information science focused on this idea(Webber, 2003). Often quoted is a formulation due to Borko (1968):Information scienceis that discipline that investigates the properties and behaviour of information . . . It isconcerned with that body of knowledge relating to the origination, collection,organization, storage, retrieval, interpretation, transmission, transformation andutilisation of information.A related formulation was presented by Hawkins (2001), asan updated “coverage statement” for Information Science Abstracts:
[. . .] information science – an interdisciplinary field concerned with . . . information transferand the sources, generation, organisation, representation, processing, distribution,communication, and uses of information.
This kind of explanation gives a more helpful insight into the concerns of the field, andits distinction from other subjects, that very general formulations such as “the study ofthe communication of information in society” (Vickery and Vickery, 2004).
Summers et al. (1999), commenting on information science research from the 1960sonwards, noted that “the information chain, from originator through distribution touse, has provided the basis for much of the work. This continues to be true”. Meadows(2008) points out that the concern of the information scientist has traditionally beenwith the later stages of the chain – with organisation and storage in libraries andinformation centres, and with retrieval and use – but that there is, in fact, justificationfor study of all parts of the chain from its beginning.
The continuing relevance of this simple conceptual model is attested by the numberof explanations of information science in Zins (2007a) collection, which mention,explicitly or implicitly, the links in the information chain. For example:
“Information science is the study of the phenomena surrounding information, includingcreation, acquisition, indexing, storing, retrieving and disseminating information”.
“Information science is the rational and systematic study of the way information is created,stored, indexed, disseminated and used”.
“Information science is the study and practical management of messages (i.e. recordedinformation, including data recorded as information) through all points of the information lifecycle”.
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The consistent centrality over time of the information chain in conceptions ofinformation science suggests that it may indeed be a useful way of clarifying the detailof the information science “field of study”.
There are two immediate objections to this proposal.The first is that the information chain is no longer of relevance, or may not even
have any meaning, in the web world. The second is that, even setting the first aside,information chain is too restrictive, or just too mundane, to be a good basis for thesubject.
Dealing with the first, it is certainly true to say that the information chain has beenunderstood differently, and indeed has changed greatly, over time, as Duff (1997)shows. Long ago, Aitchison (1988) was exemplifying in detail the changes –considerable and sometime confusing – occurring in the chain resulting from theapplications of new technology. Regazzi and Caliguiri (2006) give a more recentaccount of changes focusing on the relationship between authors and publishers.However, the general conceptual structure of Creation – Publication/dissemination –Organisation – Indexing – Retrieval – Use, for recorded information seems largelyimmune to changes in technology and media. It still seems relevant as a basis forexplaining the activities of information scientists, and the concerns of the field.
The second objection is, in essence, that a focus on the detail of informationprovision in a formal sense is too limited in scope as the basis for an academic subject.Dillon (2007), for example, lists, as one of a number of “big questions” for informationscience, the issue of how to move away from “an information provision model (storage,retrieval, management, etc.) to one where we identify and shape the manner in whichinformation nourishes a culture, an organisation or an individual”.
One counter which may be made to this point is that the understanding of what the“chain” describes has expanded greatly in recent years. The concern used to be solelywith formally published material, and within that only such as could be regarded asscholarly, professional or academic. This is now no longer the case, when informationscience research deals increasing with, on the one hand, informal – though stillpublicly available and hence “recorded” – information in many guises, and on theother hand with “everyday life” information behaviour, in addition to traditionalacademic/professional concerns.
Furthermore, we may avoid the perceived limitations of a focus on the chain conceptby using a broader framework of understanding to study the chain, which provideswithin itself links to a wider range of approaches and perspectives, such as shouldsatisfy misgivings such as Dillon’s. A suitable framework is provided by “domainanalysis”
Domain analysisDomain analysis, in the sense in which the term is used here, was introduced by BirgerHjørland, who regards it as encapusating the unique competences of the informationspecialist (Hjørland, 2002a; Hjørland and Albrechtsen, 1995).
Hjørland sees domain analysis, as practised by the information scientist, ascomprising 11 distinct approaches, any of which may be used to help to understand theinformation of a domain. These approaches are:
(1) production of literature guides and subject gateways;
(2) production of special classifications and thesauri;
(3) research on indexing and retrieval in specialist subjects;
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(4) empirical user studies;
(5) bibliometric studies;
(6) historical studies;
(7) studies of documents and “genres”;
(8) epistemological and critical studies;
(9) studies of terminology and special languages, discourse studies;
(10) studies of structures and organisations in the communication of information;and
(11) studies in cognition, computing and artificial intelligence.
The domain analysis concept has been extended by several writers, building onHjørland’s ideas. Tennis (2003), for example, argues that use of Hjørland’s 11approaches does not delineate exactly what a domain is, in any particular case, andadds two “axes”, to help definition of domains: “areas of modulation” set parameters onthe names and extension of the domain, specifying what is included and not included,and what the domain may sensibly be called; “degrees of specialisation” set the“intension” of a domain, i.e. the focus of its specialisation. See Hjørland and Hartel(2003) and Feinberg (2007) for further discussion of how a domain is described, orconstructed. Sundin (2003) extends the domain analytical approach by using tools fromthe theory of professions, looking a professional interests, power relations, andoccupational identities, in an examination of the professional domain of nursing.However, for the purposes of this analysis, only the 11 approaches will be used.
In general, domain analysis is thought of as dealing with academic or professionaltopics, but Hartel (2003) shows its application to hobbies and “serious leisure”, with theexample of cooking, while Karamuftuoglu (2006) applies it to works of “informationart”. It therefore has a sufficiently broad scope for our purposes.
We can then propose a simple conceptual model for the information sciencediscipline: the six-component information chain as the focus of interest, examined bythe 11 approaches of domain analysis. Some of the approaches will “fit” clearly withcertain components – the production of special classifications with indexing, forexample – but, in principle, any component/s of the chain may be studied by anyapproach/es.
Extending the model: contextFirst, we may also distinguish the “context” in which the conceptualisation is applied.This will both set the parameters of the field, to show where this form of informationscience may be applied, and also to give a classification of, for example, researchstudies, or educational courses.
There are two obvious forms of context description: scale and media.Scale may be individual, group or society. In the individual context, we study the
information environment and behaviour of individual persons. In the group context,the focus moves to disciplines, professions, age groups, persons undertaking specifictasks, etc. In the society context, the focus of study may be a region, a nation, or aninternational arena.
Media may be any information-bearing entity type expressed specifically orgenerally: for example, books, digital information, photographs, the web, museumobjects, etc.
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It seems clear that information science as a whole need not be restricted in eitherform of context. However, this may be useful means of clarifying what is, and is not,included in any particular instance.
This gives us a three-level model:
(1) Component (of chain).
(2) Approach (of domain analysis).
(3) Context (scale/media).
A study of, for example, use of web resources by toxicologists might be described as:. Component: use;. Approach: empirical user studies; and. Context: group (toxicology discipline)/web.
This model could be expanded to form a faceted classification scheme for theinformation science subject area. It is interesting to note that none of the 28classifications presented by the participants in Zins (2007d) Delphi study is similar tothis, as none take the components of the information chain or the approaches in domainanalysis as facets. However, a slight variation of these components is presented as the“applications and processes” section of a map of information science stemming fromthe same study (Zins, 2007c), further indicating the validity of their use in the model.
Extending the model: “fringe subjects”There are some topics to be found on information science syllabi, and listed inclassifications and thesauri of the field, which the model presented above does notrepresent. These are sometimes thought of as “fringe subjects”, or as “transferableskills”. They are the “enabling skills and knowledge”: for example, use of “generalpurpose” technology; general management topics, such as budgeting and supervisoryskills; oral and written presentation of information; influencing skills; statistics; andsocial research methods.
These are, of course, topics of importance to practicing information specialists, andare therefore likely to appear in courses of formal education and in CPD training, and inthe accreditation criteria of professional associations. But they are ancillary topics, notassociated with the information science discipline itself, and do not form a part of theconceptual model for the subject. They might, of course, be listed alongside the mainmodel, and would be likely to change as fashion dictates.
Extending the model: linking to related subjectsInevitably, for a subject almost universally regarded as interdisciplinary ofmultidisciplinary, information science is said to be related to a wide variety ofcongruent or overlapping subjects. As Cronin (2008) puts it:
The chunky concepts which make up our field’s intellectual core (e.g. knowledge, information,communication, representation) are neither owned by information science nor likely to beassembled into an entirely credible canon without the judicious addition of perspectives andapproaches taken from established disciplines such as computer science, linguistics,philosophy, psychology and sociology, as well as from newer fields such as cognitive scienceand human-computer interaction.
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Of these related fields, computer science and librarianship have already beenmentioned as perhaps the most evident of these. Others, in addition to those mentionedby Cronin, include communication science, systems science and cybernetics,mathematics, anthropology, engineering, economics, and management science.
The conceptual model gives us a way of showing these linkages in a manner lessarbitrary than the usual rather ad hoc presentation of “related” areas, and with theadvantage of showing the nature of the linkage, and hence something of the relationsbetween the disciplines. This is done by providing a link through the appropriatedomain analysis approach, from one or more components of the chain in theappropriate context.
Computer science, for example, is seen to be linked primarily through the “indexingand retrieving” approach, via the overlap area of information retrieval, which may beargued to belong to both disciplines. Its artificial intelligence aspects (not alwaysregarded as part of computer science proper) are linked through the “professionalcognition and artificial intelligence” approach.
To take another example, the “user studies” approach links, in the individualcontext, to psychology and studies of individual cognition, while in the group orsociety context it leads to sociology.
The “collections disciplines” – librarianship, archiving, museum studies and the like– are linked through the “structures and institutions” approach, primarily associatedwith the organisation component of the chain, in the context of particular media.
These examples will suffice to show that a detailed and clear rationale for therelations between information science and cognate disciplines can be derived on thebasis of the model. This has advantages in assessing and explaining the validity, andnature, of relations and overlaps between information science and other disciplines,rather than presenting related disciplines in an ad hoc manner.
Scope and limitations of the modelThis is intended to be a conceptual model of the information science discipline,focusing on the activities and concerns of this discipline. Its core is thecomponents/approaches/context structure, to which may be added the “fringesubjects” and “related subjects”.
The model does not include the information science discipline itself: its methods,history, personnel, equipment, education systems, etc. These would have to be addedas a “meta” level to the model; unless, of course, information science to be treatedsimply as another domain to be examined by its own methods.
Similarly, the formal and quantitative approach to information science does not fitwell into this model. Shannon and Weaver’s information theory has proved of littlevalue for information science, in the sense that the discipline is discussed here, lackingthe capacity to deal with knowledge, meaning and information in a human context.Attempts to add in these elements have been unsuccessful, nor have more recentattempts at deriving a mathematical theory of information shown much relevance tothe issues discussed here (see, for example, Barwise and Seligman, 1997). Thesematters, together with studies of the “philosophy of information” and attempts toproduce unifying theories of information in the physical, biological and social worlds,must find their place also in the meta level of this model.
Hjørland (2002b, 2004) has emphasised that his concept of domain analysis is rootedin a generally realist philosophy, and in a socio-cognitive approach to information
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matters, and this viewpoint therefore underlies this model; see also the similarviewpoint of Ingwersen and Jarvelin (2005) in their review of models of informationseeking and retrieval. A belief in the objective reality of the external world fits wellwith the centrality of the information chain, composed as it is of tangibleinformation-bearing documents. The socio-cognitive approach also seems anappropriate basis for the view of information science taken here, avoiding as it doesboth the overtly “systems” approach, common in the early days of information science,and also avoiding the subjective and personal “individual cognition” paradigm.However, we may note that various philosophies, particularly of knowledge, may beapplied within a domain analysis context (see, for example, Feinberg, 2007); the modelderived here is not a conceptual or methodological straightjacket. It is hospitable to avariety of research methods and approaches, as is appropriate to the status ofinformation science as a field of study.
Nor does this model require us to accept any particular definition of information,knowledge or other entities at its heart, as in the debates reviewed by Meadow andYuan (1997) and by Zins (2007b). However, again given the centrality of the domainanalysis approach, the model does assume the view of Hjørland (2007) that informationshould be understood in a situation-specific way, in that its significance and meaningmay be assessed only for a person in a particular context. This does not, of course,preclude speculations about how information in this sense may relate to the concept ofinformation as understood in different ways, in the physical and biological sciences(see, for example, Bates, 2006; Bawden, 2007a, b).
ConclusionsInformation science can be understood as a field of study, with human recordedinformation as its concern, focusing on the components of the information chain,studied through the perspective of domain analysis, and in specific or general contexts.It is based on a rather long-standing perspective of the field, combined with moremodern insights.
This is a useful conceptual model for the subject in general, and could be expandedto a classification or map. It should be particularly valuable for curriculum planning. Itenables a clear and rational understanding of the relations between information scienceand other disciplines, avoiding artificial barriers. If someone is designing retrievalsystems to give access to recorded information, or organising information collectionsby some form of classification, then they are “doing information science” as it isunderstood here, and it does not matter whether they style themselves an informationscientist, or, respectively, a computer scientist or a librarian.
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Corresponding authorLyn Robinson can be contacted at: [email protected]
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