The origins of Information Science

Documentation Paul Otlet Henri La Fontaine

Documentation Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine Brussels 1892 1895 International Institute of Bibliography techniques for the organization of documents classification with UDC

Documentation - USA FID (1938) – International Federation for Information and Documentation (1937) American Documentation Institute (ADI)

Vannevar Bush 1945 The problem – information explosion – the unabated, exponential growth of information and information records, particularly in science and technology how to make more accessible a bewildering store of knowledge The solution – MEMEX Vannevar Bush 1945 – Pres. Roosevelt’s Science Advisor

MEMEX a machine that can store vast amounts of information, in which a user has the ability to create information "trails": links of related text and illustrations. This trail can then be stored and used for future reference.

Documentation Information Science 1968 –ADI renamed – the American Society for Information Science (Eugene Garfield and others) 1960s – interest in the information problem by scientists and government; rise in technology

Documentation Information Science Transfer of information is an inseparable part of research and development. All those concerned with research and development—individual scientists, engineers, industrial and academic research establishments, technical societies, Government agencies—must accept responsibility for the transfer of information in the same degree and spirit that they accept responsibility for research and development (US President’s Science Advisory Committee, 1963)

Documentation Information Science technological advances – devices and systems for information processing development of national information systems 3rd generation computers for space program – massive data storage

Information Science Much of what is now practiced as information science would cease if not for the computer: automatic indexing, file structuring and searching, sorting and merging, query negotiation, content analysis, computer augmented cataloging, etc (Kochen, 1974)

Information science computational tradition document tradition Michael Buckland Information science document tradition document management concerned with collecting preserving, organizing, representing, selecting, reproducing interpreting, translating, summarizing and disseminating importance of knowledge and multiple objectives assumed in the use of documents acknowledges the importance of technology but also human beings computational tradition attempts to transfer computational techniques to problems of managing documents

Origins of Information Science Librarians organize, analyze and provide access for all kinds of users to the contents of documents Documentalists tend to exploit a wider variety of media and formats work mainly with scientific and technical documents and users Information Scientists mainly from documentalists aware of the wider aspects of a scientific investigation of the processes of generation, representation, retrieval and use of information

Information science and related disciplines Communication Epistemology Mathematics Information Science Sociology Computer Science Psychology Linguistics (Ingwersen, 1992)