ON HERITAGE AND THE INFORMATION DISCIPLINES By Marcia J. Bates Professor Emerita Department of Information Studies University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Los Angeles, CA, USA ; Web: Libraries in the Digital Age (LIDA) 2009 Dubrovnik, Croatia May 26, 2009

Bates, M. J., & Maack, M. N. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3 rd Ed., New York: Taylor & Francis, 2009

Information: The pattern of organization of matter and energy.

 Information is not “everything”  Information is the pattern of organization of everything

 Encoded information is information that has symbolic, linguistic, and/or signal-based patterns of organization.  Embodied information is the corporeal expression or manifestation of information previously in encoded form.

Human beings have information encoded in the neural apparatus of their brains, and have information embodied in Experienced information, Enacted information, and Expressed information.

 Experienced information: The pattern of organization of subjective experience; the feeling of being in life.  Enacted information: The pattern of organization of actions of an animal in, and interacting with its environment, utilizing capabilities and experience from its neural stores.  Expressed information: The pattern of organization of communicatory calls, scents, gestures, and, ultimately, human spoken language used to communicate among members of a species and between species.

Susantha Goonatilake’s Information Flow Lineages: Genetic Neural-cultural Exosomatic Goonatilake, S. (1991). The Evolution of Information: Lineages in Gene, Culture, and Artefact. London; New York: Pinter.

 Recorded information: Communicatory or memorial information preserved in a durable medium.  Embedded information: The pattern of organization of the enduring effects of the presence of animals on the earth; may be incidental, as a path through the woods, or deliberate, as a fashioned tool or structure.

A fourth lineage, Residue, carries Trace information: The pattern of organization of the residue that is incidental to living processes or which remain after living processes are finished with it.

Bates, M. J., Fundamental Forms of information. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. (57)8,

Is an antelope a document?? Briet, S. (1951). Qu’est-ce que la documentation? (In translation) Retrieved 28 April 2009 from what%20is%20documentation.pdf what%20is%20documentation.pdf

 Libraries and archives collect documents (recorded information)  Museums collect art, artifacts, and non- living specimens (embedded information)  Zoos, aquariums, arboretums, and gardens collect and maintain live specimens (genetic information as phenotypes)

Collections disciplines collect objects from out of the stream of life, and place them in a special designated place where access to the objects can be provided for social purposes.

Disciplines in the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3 rd Ed. – Library and information science – Archival science – Museum studies – Knowledge management – Records management – Informatics – Information systems – Bibliography – Document and genre theory – Social studies of information