CHAPTER 2 Foundations of Information Science and Technology 2.1. Basic Concepts Reflect for a moment on the importance of technology in your life every day. How do you • Keep in touch with people across campus, across town, or around the world? • Find information to answer a trivia question or prepare a research paper? • Create the soundtrack for a walk or workout? • Provide an evening's entertainment? • Present information about yourself to friends, family, or future employers? All of these information-related tasks are increasingly assisted by or reliant on technology. And the equipment we use continues to change rapidly and dramatically; even if the basic functions performed and kinds of information we seek and exchange are essentially what they were a century ago. Studying information science and technology allows us to move from living in this complex world to observing and improving our understanding and mastery of it. This book considers fundamental aspects of human information processing, and how various abilities and limitations affect our uses and potential applications of evolving communication and information technologies. We will trace historic roots and theoretical foundations while keeping in mind their consequences and possibilities for applications and services now and in the near future. This chapter provides background and definitions for terms and concepts that are basic to the field. Examining answers to the question, What is information? introduces this basic concept and demonstrates the three dominant approaches to studying and understanding information science and technology. Next, we consider how information can be physically manifested and disseminated. The following section briefly examines what information science means, and the chapter concludes with an account of the field's intellectual and historical roots. 2.2. Defining Terms Information Defining information is an obvious first step in understanding information science and technology. Buckland (1991) observed that things can be informative. A tree stump contains in its rings information about its age, as well as information about the climate during the tree's lifetime. In similar ways, anything can be informative. Some theorists hold that information is an objective phenomenon; others say that it depends on the receiver. Parker (1974) took the objective approach: "Information is the pattern of organization of matter and energy" (p. 10). Bateson (1972) took the subjective view: Information is "a difference that makes a difference" (for somebody or something or from a specific perspective; p. 453). Note, first, the similarities between the two perspectives. Both the objective and the subjective views agree that any "pattern of organization of matter and energy" may inform somebody and thus be considered information. Information is thus a very broad term that is not limited to text or human products. The basic difference should also be mentioned. If information is objective, then the representation of information is independent of cont~xt and purpose. If, on the other hand, information is understood as subjective, then its representation in information systems must consider who is to be informed and about what. These two perspectives, which Ellis (1992) labeled the physical and cognitive paradigms, have both provided useful bases for thought and development of information science. Recently, researchers have added a third perspective: the socio-cognitive approach, which holds that individual cognitive or subjective understanding is conditioned by society and culture. Hj0rland (1997), for example, holds that information "users should be seen as individuals in concrete situations in social organizations and domains of knowledge" (p. 111). Some writers contrast information with the notions of data and knowledge. Data Data is the plural of datum, derived from Latin dare (to give); hence, data is "something given." Some style manuals insist that data be used only in the plural; it may, however, be used as a collective noun: a plural noun used in the singular to denote a set of items. Machlup (1983) wrote: Foundations of Information Science and Technology 11 Data are the things given to the analyst, investigator, or problem solver; they may be numbers, words, sentences, records, assumptions-just anything given, no matter in what form and of what origin. This used to be well known to scholars in most fields: Some wanted the word data to refer to facts, especially to instrument-readings; others to assumptions. Scholars with a hypothetico-deductive bent wanted data to mean the given set of assumptions; those with an empirical bent wanted data to mean the records, or protocol statements, representing the findings of observation, qualitative or quantitative. : .. One can probably find quotations supporting all possible combinations of the three terms [data, information, and knowledge] or of the concepts they are supposed to denote. Each is said to be a specific type of each of the others, or an input for producing each of the others, or an output of processing each of the others. Now, data from the point of view of the programmers, operators, and users of the computer, need not be data in any other sense. (pp. 646-647) Spang-Hanssen (2001) discussed data as well in a 1970 speech: Information about some physical property of a material is actually incomplete without information about the precision of the data and about the conditions under which these data were obtairied. Moreover, various investigations of a property have often led to different results that cannot be compared and evaluated apart from information about their background. An empirical fact has always a history and a perhaps not too certain future. This history and future can be known only through information from particular documents, i.e. by document retrieval. The so called fact retrieval centers seem to be just information centers that keep their information sources-Le. their documents exclusively to themselves. We may conclude that what is considered data is relative: What some consider the given (or input), others may consider the output. From the per~ spective of information science, it is important to represent and communicate not just data but also its background, its reception, and the theoretical assumptions connected with data, which makes the concepts of knowledge and document important. Knowledge The classical definition goes back to Plato: Knowledge is verified true belief. This definition is problematic, however, because knowledge is always open to modification and revision, so that very little (or nothing) can be considered knowledge in Plato's sense. This is why pragmatic and materialist theories consider the concept of knowledge in relation to human practice: Knowledge expands the actors' possibilities to act and to adjust to the world in which they live. Pragmatism and materialism consider human practice the final criterion of knowledge and see experimentation as an integrated component. The Oxford English Dictiona,y definitions of knowledge include 1) "skill or expertise acquired in a particular subject ... through learning;" 2) "that which is known;" and 3) "being aware or cognizant of a fact, state of affairs, etc." (OED Online, "knowledge"). The Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom Hierarchy Ackoff (1989) saw the information pyramid (Figure 2.1) as a progression: 1. Data are facts that result from observations. 2. Information is collections of facts provided with context. 3. Knowledge is generated when people supply meaning to information. 4. Wisdom results from shared insights and knowledge. For example: 1. Contributors to the World Wide Web post results from their empirical research in the sciences or new insights into historical events or literary research. These contributors create links from one page to another. Each link could be considered a piece of data (a datum). 2. By tracing the links, we can create a structure or map of the web. This organized collection of links is information. 3. Analyzing the map of the web allows us to see areas of dense linking and identify sites that receive links from many others (hubs). This knowledge of web structure results from our understanding of the information. 4. The occurrence of many links to a website is often believed to indicate that the site has value and potential utility for other web users. Search engines such as Google take advantage of this "wisdom." Foundations of Information Science and Technology 13 Figure 2.1 Data-information-knowledge-wisdom pyramid Braganza (2004) suggested a top-down perspective rather than the traditional bottom-up approach. Rather than assuming that data is the basic unit of information and knowledge, information professionals, in order to provide more useful insights into information work, should consider beginning with a focus on the creation and communication of knowledge. The pyramid model does a reasonable job of reflecting the evolution of thinking about the concept of information. Early research focused on the base of the pyramid: how to send, receive, and manipulate bits of data. The Shannon-Weaver model of communication (Figure 2.2) from 1949 shows this focus (and is discussed in more detail in Chapter 14). 1n the 1940s, Claude Shannon was working for the telephone company at Bell Labs. While investigating how to transmit a message both efficiently and effectively, he realized that noise, from any source, could keep the destination (the person on the other end of the telephone line) from receiving the message that the information source had sent. Shannon's analysis also demonstrated that there is a theoretical limit to bandwidth. In 1949, Shannon and Warren Weaver wrote The Mathematical Theo1y of Communication, which demonstrates how redundancy helps to compensate for noise in the transmission of a message. If you are directing a colleague to a site on the web, you might give the internet protocol (IP) address, such as 209.85.129.99. However, if you mistype just one numeral, your friend might be directed to the wrong location. By using a URL in natural language, your friend can compensate for errors (noise) that might creep into the message: Figure 2.2 Shannon~Weaver model of communication www.google.com is the redundant, human-understandable version of an IP address. Shannon and Weaver (1949/ 1964) identified three aspects of information: 1. Technical aspects, concerned with problems of transmission 2. Semantic aspects, related to the meaning and truth of a message 3. Influential aspects, concerned with how a message affects human behavior The definition of information used in their mathematical theory considers only the first level, the technical concerns in transmission; this is the base of the information pyramid. The Shannon-Weaver model has been criticized for its conduit metaphor, emphasizing the channel, rather than the source and destination of the message. Interest in the semantic aspects of information had gained ground by the 1980s. Researchers noted that different people had different understandings of the same item of information. This led to research on the cognitive aspects of information (the mental processes of knowing), including how people assess information (Machlup & Mansfield, 1983). Requiring consideration of the human perspective means that information can no longer be understood objectively; what is informative will depend on the person assessing the meaning and truth of a message, as Shannon and Weaver would say. Recent research has also considered social aspects of how information is understood. This approach notes that how each of us understands an item of potential information is influenced by our social environment: societal conventions (such as language), history; and interactions with other people. This view has been labeled the socio-cognitive approach to information (Hj0rland, 2002). Foundations of Information Science and Technology 1 S 2.3. Disseminating Information Documents Before information science was termed information science, it was called documentation, and documents were considered the basic objects of study for the field. Buckland (1991) has described the history of the concept of document in information science. Early in the 20th century, researchers felt a need for a generic term for the object of their work: not only texts, but also natural objects, artifacts, models, objects refle~ting human activities, objects of art, and human ideas. The term document (or documenting unit) was used with a special meaning in order to include informative physical objects. Buckland noted that the word document comes from Latin docere, meaning to teach or inform, and the suffix -ment, meaning a tool. Originally, then, the word meant a tool for teaching or informing, whether through lecture, experience, or text. Only later was it narrowed to mean objects carrying texts. In information science today, the concept of document is understood as "any concrete or symbolic indication, preserved or recorded, for reconstructing or for proving a phenomenon, whether physical or mental" (Briet, 1951, p. 7, as cited in Buckland, 1991, p. 355). Information and Communication Technologies For the past half century we have used the term information technology to note the use of computer hardware and software for handling information. Kline (2004) traces the origin of the term to the business world, where "management information systems" were developed in the 1960s. The term information and communication technologies (ICTs) has been adopted more recently, acknowledging the increasing importance of telephones, cable, and satellite transmission in effective use of information technologies. Figure 2.3 uses data from the U.S. Census to show the rates of adoption for several ICTs. Alan Kay, who worked at Atari, Xerox, Apple, and Disney, has defined technology as "anything that was invented after you were born." His assertion expresses the common feeling that new technologies are being introduced and adopted with increasing speed. Figure 2.3 suggests that U.S. residents born in the 21st century will view broadband internet as a natural part of life, but it will always be a "technology" for many of their parents. As we design, use, and evaluate systems that rely on ICTs, we should be aware of new developments and also mindful of the "long tail" of technologies that some users will approach as novel or challenging even as others accept them as an inseparable part of life. Figure 2.3 Percentage of U.S. ·households using information technologies 1950-2006 ' 2.4. Information Science Information science emerged as the name for this field in about 1960. The Institute of Information Scientists was established in 1958; the American Documentation Institute changed its name to the American Society for Information Science in 1968, and in 2000 changed its name again to the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Borko's (1968) definition of information science provides a list of tasks the fiel~ sho~d address: "the origination, collection, organization, storage, retneval, mterpretation, transmission, transformation, and utilization of information" (p" 3). The Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science (Reitz, 2007) uses similar terms: "The systematic study and analysis of the sources, development, collection, organization, dissemination, evaluation, use, and management of information in all its forms, including the channels (formal and informal) and technology used in its communication.'' Sometimes the plural, information sciences, is used. Machlup and Mansfield (1983), for example, suggested that one should speak about the information sciences as one speaks of the social sciences. The term informatics, which was proposed independently by Walter R Bauer and Phlllipe Dreyfus in 1962 (Bauer, 1996), has a similar meaning. Redmond-Neal and Hlava (2005) say it "represents the conjunction of information science and information technology" (p. 63). Reitz (2007) continues "It is the formal study of information, including its structure, properties: uses, and functions in society; the people who use it; and in particular the Foundations of Information Science and Technology 17 technologies developed to record, organize, store, retrieve, and disseminate it" ("informatics")" WordNet (2006) defines both information science and informatics as "the sciences concerned with gathering, manipulating, storing, retrieving, and classifying recorded information.'' Both information science and informatics can be used with subject-specific modifiers, as in geographic information science (studying geocoded information) or bioinformatics (using information technology to study biological information). 2.5. Intellectual Foundations. of Information Science and Technology Arguments About Origins Information science has been variously described as interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, metadisciplinary, and multidisciplinary. Each term is partially accurate but not entirely adequate. Information science has intellectual roots in a number of disciplines and applied fields of study and practice" These disciplines and applied fields have been well described and explored in a now classic series of articles in The Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages, edited by Fritz Machlup and Una Mansfield (1983). The discussions attribute the origins to bibliography, library science, documentation, and developments in the 1950s in the handling and retrieval of scientific documentation. Ultimately, the discussants agree to disagree, but all generally acknowledge the merits of each other's arguments. The brief review presented here represents a primarily Western perspective on the history of information science and technology since the invention of printing. Major Developments in the Early History of Information Science To a significant extent, all societies are information societies. Even before the technologies of literacy were developed, a rich oral tradition of information existed in most societies" Ong (2002) has described how difficult the transition was from an oral to a literate society. He maintains that learning the technologies of literacy was the first fundamental shift in the way humans thought and processed information, a transition from a world of sound to a world of sight. Even though archives and libraries have existed since the beginning of civilization, practitioners gave little attention to issues regarding their administration, arrangement, description, access, and related concerns until the 18th century. Archival materials and library materials are now viewed as distinctly different but were often treated similarly, and few principles were developed for their handling. For both archives and libraries, the custodian of the documents was usually a noted scholar in one or more subjects and only minimally concerned with the development of principles regarding management and use. The Encyclopaedia Britannica ("Library," 2010) puts it concisely: ''Although the traditional librarian acted primarily as a keeper of records, the concept of an active service of advice and information eventually appeared as a legitimate extension of the role of custodian." Just as rudimentary rules and methods for arranging and describing library and archival materials had begun to emerge prior to the 18th century, so had the art of bibliography, usually with attention to completeness in some subject or type of materials. Conrad Gesner's (1516-1565) Bibliotheca Universalis (published in 1545) provides an excellent example. Gesner developed and expanded general principles of inclusion, arrangement, and indexing (Jackson, 1974). Indexing principles, or at least techniques, had even earlier origins, particularly in dealing with sacred texts. Most of these early techniques and practices were well described in Gabriel Naude's (1600-1653) Advice on Establishing a Library (1627), a work that became influential in its time on issues regarding bibliography, library management, classification, cataloging, and related topics. The bibliographic "urge" of Gesner and others was matched by the desire of scholars to understand and organize all of human knowledge. Plato and Aristotle were likely the first to state this goal; during the 17th and 18th centuries, many others began work on such endeavors. A classification system of the world's knowledge and the draft of an encyclopedia to contain it, produced in 1620 by Francis Bacon (1561-1621), were foundations for later developers. Gottfried von Leibnitz (1646-1716), librarian, philosopher, mathematician, and logician, followed in Bacon's footsteps with his classification system, again with attention to organizing all of the world's knowledge. Others, such as Denis Diderot (1713-1784) and Jean d'Alembert (1717-1783), continued this work ("Library," 2010). The idea of compiling, classifying, and making available the world's knowledge would later greatly influence those in library science, documentation, and information science. By the 18th century, a number of advances in the library arts began to appear: national and subject bibliographies, printed library catalogs, new schemes for subject arrangement of materials on shelves, and principles for bibliography. Also, the first museums were opened to the public in this period. Formerly, these commonly called "cabinets of curiosities" were the private collections of royalty. The British Museum opened to the public in 1753 and was soon followed by the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1793. The rapid expansion of the number oflibraries of all types during the early 19th c"entury led to more extensive writings about libraries and library management. Martin Schrettinger (1772~1851), a German librarian, was the first person to use the term library science; in 1808 he employed the term Foundations of Information Science and Technology 19 Bibliothekswissenschaft to describe the science that dealt with cataloging, classification, shelving and shelf arrangement, and library management. Friedrich A. Ebert (1791-1834) and Christian Molbech (1783-1857) expanded on his work. Molbech emphasized that "librarianship is a matter of theory and practice, and it consists of two principal branches, organization and administration'' (as cited in Jackson, 1974, p. 324). Schrettinger, Ebert, and Molbech presented the types of skills and knowledge needed by a librarian, essentially destroying the long-dominant idea that being a scholar is sufficient background for a librarian (Jackson, 1974). The first journal devoted to libraries, librarianship, and library science issues, titled Serapeum: Journal of Library Science, Manuscript Information, and Older Literature, focused on scholarly libraries; it began publication in 1840 in Germany (Jackson, 1974). Considerable progress was made in the development of the techniques and content of library science between 1850 and 1900. In the U.S. this trend included the following milestones: • The 1876 founding of the American Library Association • The 1876 publication of a comprehensive statistical report on libraries, which also contained Charles A. Cutter's chapter on library catalogs and his Rules for a Dictionary Catalog, an introduction to the study of library science, and Melvil Dewey's introduction to his decimal classification scheme • The rapid adoption and use of Dewey's decimal classification system and Cutter's expansive classification system by libraries of all types; both employed subject arrangement systems and easy-to-use marking systems for shelf arrangement of documents • The common deployment of card catalogs in all types of libraries • The 1876 publication of the first journal devoted to library management concerns, the American Library Journal (later changed to Library JournaQ • The 1887 founding, at Columbia University, of the first formal, university-based educational program for librarians In the U.K., Anthony Fanizzi, librarian for the British Museum, developed 91 rules for author-title entries, bringing consistency to cataloging work. These rules, first published in 1841, continued to influence all developers of library catalogs through the remainder of the 19th century. In 1877, the Library Association of the United Kingdom was founded after an international conference of librarians. In Europe, the Ecole des Chartes, founded in France in 1821, improVed the formal education and training of librarians, archivists, and bibliographers. Karl Franz Otto Dziatzko (1842-1903), a professor of library science at the University of G6ttingen {Germany), introduced library education classes in 1886. Informal courses and in~service education continued to dominate European library education througb the remainder of the 19th century. Attempts to remove the "scholarly librarian" approach in the education of librarians continued to trouble European library education, ultimately leading to two different philosophies and types of library science: one focused on scholarly libraries and one on popular libraries (Davis, 1994). Dewey's practice-centered philosophy eventually dominated library science. Columbia's School of Library Economy dealt with the practical problems of libraries, and most lectures were delivered by practicing librarians (Jackson, 1974, p. 399). Library education and training were slowly moving from an apprenticeship approach to one based on a formal technical education. Major Developments in the Modern History of Information Science By the beginning of the 20th century, the amount of published literature in all fields of study, especially the sciences, was growing rapidly. It was also becoming more technical, more difficult to acquire, and greatly in need of new approaches to summarization and subject access. The tools that developed~ such as indexes, bibliographies, and abstracts~required someone who understood the subject matter of the literature and how to present it. In 1895, Belgian attorneys Paul Otlet and Henri Lafontaine established what would become the International Institute of Bibliography with the objective of controlling the world's literature. Otlet and LaFontaine were greatly influenced by earlier encyclopedia efforts, as well as the desire to foster peace through the unification of knowledge. Over the next 40 years, Otlet and colleagues developed systematic principles, techniques, and technologies for what they called documentation. Otlet's key idea was that separating the book (or journal) from its author and his intentions should allow one to extract and index the work's new contribution to knowledge. Researchers at the International Institute of Bibliography used the relatively new technology of cards and combined them with Dewey's classification scheme (which they soon revised extensively, creating the Universal Decimal Classification). They built a large bibliography and catalog, peaking at 15.6 million entries in 1942. Otlet called this approach the "mongraphic principle," so that bits and pieces (pages, paragraphs, sentences, etc.) of information were indexed and classified; essentially, these researchers were creating a database (Hayward, 1997). Combining the technologies of card, cabinet, and microfilm (Otlet and LaFontaine invented microfiche) with indexing that used the Universal Decimal Classification provided a complete information system. Otlet then added an information service via mail or telephone. Foundations of Information Science and Technology 21 In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the number of museums, particularly in the U.S., expanded, and a professional cadre of museum specialists developed to support them. John Cotton Dana, director of the Newark Public Library, was a pioneer in this area. In 1925 Dana, one of the founders of the Special Libraries Association in the U.S., established the Newark Museum in the same building as the library and began an apprenticeship program that would foster in museum curators a broad knowledge, including familiarity with library processes. A key part of the expertise of these curators was the development of exhibitions and loan programs that met the needs of the local population (Given & McTavish, 2010). By 1934, Otlet had systematized most of his ideas about the science of documentation into his text, Traite de documentation (Otlet, 1934/1980). For Otlet, documentation represented "the means of bringing into use all of the written or graphic sources of our knowledge" (as cited in Rayward, 1997, p. 299), as well as a new intellectual discipline. Although some scholarly librarians objected, the documentation idea had considerable influence in Europe; it was essentially unknown elsewhere in the world. Special librarians in the U.S. and the U.K. did pick up some of these ideas and approaches (particularly in the detailed indexing of a wide variety of documentary materials and specialized information services; Muddiman, 2005; Williams, 1997). The European documentation movement influenced Watson Davis, who founded the American Documentation Institute in 1937 to study the problems of the distribution of scientific information. After World War II, Suzanne Briet, director of studies at the National Institute for Techniques in Documentation in Paris, expanded Otlet's ideas by defining documents broadly, to include much more than text. Buckland (2009) describes her views as "semiotic," treating documents as "indexical signs exposing an unlimited horizon of networks of techniques, technologies, individuals, and institutions" (p. 79). In the early part of the 20th century, library science gradually gained acceptance as the preferred term to describe the study of the management of libraries and library services. University-level educational programs along the Columbia University model were established at several other institutions even though the predominant training approach remained within libraries. Charles C. Williamson's study of library education, published in 1923, strongly recommended moving library education to universities (Davis, 1994); in the U.S. this move was largely complete by the 1950s. Williamson's report also emphasized the importance of research in meeting the challenges of library science; in 1926 the University of Chicago established the first PhD program in library science. As the Graduate Library School at Chicago took shape, the faculty debated the focus of the program. Pierce Butler's small booklet An Introduction to Library Science (1933/ 1961) emphasized the philosophical principles of librarianship rather than its scientific aspects. Between 1950 and 1970, education for librarianship moved from the expectation of an undergraduate degree to a requirement for a master's as the first professional degree. The establishment of the U.S. National Archives in 1934 gave impetus to the archival community's development of an archival science. The explosion of scientific documentation during and after World War II challenged librarians and the scientific community. Scientists, dissatisfied with what they perceived as slow and cumbersome cataloging and classification processes and ineffective retrieval methods, introduced new technologies: punched cards and, later, computers. Scientists and special librarians collaborated in this work. Principles and techniques for coordinate indexing and searching were developed and adopted in many libraries and information centers. Automatic indexing and abstracting, machine translation, and remote searching of databases were tried, with both successes and failures. Initially, these pioneers called themselves scientific information specialists, but this cumbersome title was inadequately descriptive of what they were trying to do: develop a science of information. A rich outpouring of new retrieval systems, new technologies for storage, and new ways of subject control took place between 1950 and 1970, much of it funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Air Force, and other government agencies. Systems were developed that provided automatic indexing, machine translation, thesaurus construction, retrieval effectiveness, citation indexing, and online retrieval. These experiments and systems brought new participants to the new field, people with backgrounds in computer science, linguistics, behavioral sciences, mathematics, and communications. Textbooks for the new field called it information retrieval, information storage and retrieval, or information science. Documentation or information science was influenced by Vannevar Bush's idea of Memex (Buckland, 2006) and the information theory work of Claude Shannon, Warren Weaver, and Norbert Wiener on telecommunications systems. Definitions of this new field were offered (borrowed largely from the European documentalists) (e.g., Barko, 1968; Shera & Egan, 1950; Simon, 1947; Tate, 1950) but no definition seemed to suit everyone (Lipetz, 2005). Recent Major Trends in the Development of Information Science By the early 1970s, research extended to information use and informationseeking behavior. Researchers, primarily from the behavioral sciences, studied the information needs of researchers in various scientific fields. In the early 21st century, this has been one of the most active research areas in information science. Case (2007) points out the involvement of the communications sciences in studying information-seeking behaviors and the valuable Foundations of Information Science and Technology 23 contributions communication scientists have made to broadening the scope of information science. From the 1960s to the 1980s, many archival studies programs in the U.S. and Canada became established in schools of library science and information science, with a few in departments of history or public history. Museum studies during the 1970s began to take a different approach from the one Dana had promoted in the early 1900s. Influenced by the Canadian Museums Committee, training of curators emphasized expert knowledge and the production of new knowledge. Exhibits of this new knowledge tended to focus on the scholar and not the general public. The debate about the training and responsibilities of museum staff continues, but recognition is gradually emerging that museums, like libraries and archives, are "memory institutions" (Hjerppe, 1994) and, as such, play multiple roles. As digitization of the collections in all three types of institutions increases, it is becoming evident that libraries, museums, and archives share many of the same issues about preserving their information and making it available to the scholar and the general public (Given & McTavish, 2010). By the late 1980s and the early 1990s, both a significant bifurcation and a curious melding had taken place in information science. On one side were the computer and information science schools and people vVith major objectives centered on systems analysis, information processing, database design, and information theory. On the other side were the library and information science people, some with an orientation closely linked to computer science but most with a wide-ranging set of objectives complementary to their origins in library science or documentation programs. These objectives were centered largely on information seeking, use, or behavior; management of information; information policy; classification theory; and bibliographic control. The research and development work of both groups is increasingly oriented toward issues surrounding the internet and electronic documents. The computer and information science people often find a "home" in the various sections of the Association for Computing Machinery, and people from both groups find the American Society for Information Science and Technology a hospitable place for their research and educational interests. In a recent assessment of the relationships, differences, and contributions of librarianship and information science to each other, Hayes (1994), a pioneer in both areas, stated, "Librarianship serves as one of the most visible and well-defined contexts for theoretical studies of information processes; conversely, information science serves as one of the foundations for library science" (p. 275). He concluded, "Together librarianship and information science share concerns with each of them [the various threads he discusses], but they approach them from different perspectives and with differiog priorities" (p. 280). Rayward (1997) concluded his article on Otlet and LaFontaine's work in documentation with a return to Machlup and Mansfield's (1983) themes, considering whether information science is narrow or broad, whether it is only a composite of disciplinary "chunks" and not a true discipline, and whether it will ever emerge as a true discipline on its own. Rayward did not answer these questions but suggested that the ultimate foundation of information science involves the interactions between information and society.