WHAT HAS
INFORMATION SCIENCE CONTRIBUTED TO THE WORLD?
A CONTINUING DISCUSSION
The article below is the initiation of a discussion on the
contributions that Information Science has made to the world,
particularly the world of science. Trudi Bellardo Hahn has asked
me to create a "forum" for continuation of the discussion. This page,
and regular updates to it, will be the forum (until we find a better
venue). The discussion begins with Trudi's article, reproduced in its
entirety below (with a link to the original source) and continues with
the most recent contributions I have received from others about the
topic, which are reproduced with their permission. Please join in
the discussion by e-mailing me at
bobwill@sc.edu
After brief review of your comments I will then ask for your permission to reproduce them on the Web page.
2
Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
—April/May
2003 (reproduced by
permission of ASIS&T)
What Has Information Science
Contributed to the World?
T he Council of Scientific Society Presidents recently asked me to respond to a survey question:
“What
were the most important seminal five to seven discoveries in the field
represented by your
professional
society in the 20th century?” Such a question
raises several complex issues, such as what
are
the most remarkable achievements unique to the field of information
science in the past 100
years?
Who are the individuals who were responsible for each one? Just what
constitutes our field as
separate
from other fields such as computer science, librarianship, chemistry,
engineering, medicine,
management,
law or education? How do our research methods differ from those of the
social
sciences,
operations research, linguistics and others from
which we have obviously borrowed?
Since
I could not answer the survey question off the top of my head, I
consulted ASIST members
who
research and write the history of information science.
Michael Buckland, Eugene
Garfield,
Julian Warner and Robert Williams replied. It appeared that
“developments” is more
apt
to describe information science activities than “discoveries.”
However,
their responses appeared to have discouragingly little consensus or
overlap.
By
merging their responses into larger categories and consulting some
information science
textbooks
and historical papers, I drafted a list of five major categories of
accomplishment that I
believe
can be attributed directly and solely (well, nearly) to IS researchers
and developers.
of
bibliometrics – the study of published literature and its usage.
Bibliometrics has many aspects,
including studies of impact, diffusion of innovation, bibliographic
coupling, citation and co-citation
patterns and other statistical regularities in
scientific and scholarly productivity and
communication. pioneered
innovations in indexing systems that were very different from
traditional subject cataloging
in libraries – automatic indexing and abstracting, KWIC and KWOC
indexing, citation
indexing, keyword indexing and postcoordination, text analysis and
natural language searching
systems. They also developed thesauri or controlled vocabularies for
thousands of
disciplines and specialties. 3.
Information science developers applied computers to manipulating
documents and document records
in information storage and retrieval systems. This
began almost as soon as computers became
available in the 1950s, but really took off with third-generation
computers in the 1960s. The
development of online database systems was accompanied
by related telecommunications and networking
technologies and specialized search functionalities, as well as large
machine-readable databases.
The application of formal logic (Boolean operators) to database
searching was a
major component of these developments. well
as related areas such as relevance and utility assessment. The
sociologists got us started, but
we quickly developed our own body of research in the second half of the
last century. information
policies related to issues of privacy, security, regulating
dissemination and access, intellectual
property, acceptable use and others. They contributed to developing
standards for the
processing and communication of information, as well as the monitoring
of the national information
infrastructure (human, technological, materials and financial) to
ensure that information systems
and services related to the public interest were maintained.
should
have high priority, to identify the pioneers and to
date seminal discoveries, developments or inventions.
We know we are multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary, but I believe
there is a core of knowledge
and developments that is uniquely ours – if we can but define it.
I
have asked Robert Williams, University of South Carolina, to work with
members of the Special Interest
Group on History and Foundations of Information Science to refine and
expand this list. He
has already started the process by compiling a draft of
a detailed chronology of information science and
technology available at
www.libsci.sc.edu/bob/istchron/ISCNET/Ischron.htm . Please help by
sending your thoughts and suggestions to Bob ( bobwill@sc.edu ).
to
the existing “About ASIST” page and the mission and vision
statements, it will show ASIST
members
and potential members what this field is about, what it values and
where the greatest potential for
future discoveries and contributions lies. President’s
Page CONTRIBUTIONS
TO THE DISCUSSION
1. Information science researchers measured the information explosion.
They created the field
2. Information science developers contained the information explosion.
Information scientists
4. Information science researchers studied users’ information seeking,
needs and preferences, as
5. Information science leaders in government and industry contributed
to formulating national
ASIST members are invited to debate the content of this list, to
suggest additions or items that
Our goal is to publish an authoritative list of accomplishments on the
ASIST website. In addition
From:
Gafar Ibrahim (2/05)
Librarian & Information Officer GHD Global Lty Ltd
I have read the introductory President's Page of Ms Trudi Hahn on the
ASIST Bulletin, April/May 2003,p.2 concerning the question of 'What has
Information Science Contributed to the World'. I agree with her
and add that earlier tools of information science applied for
taming first waves of the information explosion phenomenon, such as
automatic indexing and abstracting, KWIC and KWOC indexing, text
analysis and natural language search systems have led and contributed to
the development of the indexing and the search engines of both the
Internet and the Web. Still there is a need for more research and
development of them in order to prevent the coming information society
generations from the devastation of the digital tsunami as well as loss
of global digital memory.
Moreover, terms like: document or doc., web page, home page,
bookmark,
databases, program library, ebook, ejournal and hyperlinks that applied
as
'see' and 'see also' references are inspirations from what earlier
information
scientists have developed and dealt with. To what extent do we need to
document
the role of the information science in building the current Information
Society? Let's discuss...
From: Lawrence W. McCrank (8/03)
Trudi Bellardo Hahn's statement of contribitions of Information Science
(IS) as seminal discoveries in this century is written to be as
ecumenical as possible. Still, there is always the exclusionary
delimitation of one's professional society, i.e., ASIS&T, when so
much of informaiton science lays outside its purview as defined largely
by practitioners in library
science qua information science, and so many contributers who would not
see themselves as information scientists... lexicographers and
linguists, historians pioneering in methodology and especially
quantitifaction,
those specializing in imagery, and whole coteries of information
scientists within other disciplines. Consider, for example, the
journal Le medieviste
et l'ordinateur, a review published by the Institut de Recherche et
d'Histoire des Textes in Paris. Its 42nd vol. focused just on the
special
theme of Diplomatics and computing, ie. form analysis in communications
and
documentation ... never considered Information Science as such by "the"
Information Scientists of ASIS&T. Vol. 41 treats the
cognitive aspects of medieval documentation at the very point of
information science's origin... far flung from our
modernist notion and presentist mentalities. Or consider the explosion
of
work in archival science that is seldom integrated into Information
Science,
and which goes on unfortunately without the cross-fertilization with IS
that would be a benefit for all.
Much of my own work lies outside the invisible parameters of ASIS&T
in such forums as Computers and History, largely a European circle;
archival science and humanities computing; and such contributions as
the series Data Bases in the Social Sciences and Humanities where
genuinely pioneering work was reported, not from the ASIS&T inner
circle, but from humanists and social scientists working within their
individual disciplines. The cross over to IS per se has been
negligible. In my last book -- dedicated to Eric Boehm, an information
scientist and entrepreneur who should have been included in
ASIS&T's "greats" for his early pioneering of automated indexing
and bibliographic control over the literature of History, founding of
ABC-Clio and the Institute of Information Management -- I attempted to
provide a
synthesis on the interplay between History and Information Science, a
hybrid called Historical Information Science, since the advent of
personal computing in 1984. Its 6000 citation bibliography may beof
interest to those interested in the history of information
science. And for the issue of History becoming history with the
onslaught of digital media and rampant interpolation everywhere,
resulting in a destablization of how we know anything from
documentation, one can turn to the recent discussion in the American
Historical Review [Vol. 103, Issue 5, (Dec., 1998)] forum by Roy
Rozenzweig -- again outside the pale of IS as defined by ASIS&T.
The question [by Trudi B. Hahn] posed to ASIS&T was to identify if
important accomplishments over the past century to establish its
professional
history in the historical tradition of great deeds... ignoring its
failed
aspirations, fractured professional association, and disunified
research
agenda. In this sense Trudi Bellardo Hahn's answer may be appropriate
and
her attempt at synthesis intriquing... but IS is still without
its own history
well documented or elaborated in historical analysis and secondary
literature,
and it remains virtually beyond the pale of professional History.
Is it
any wonder then that IS has not bothered much about History? In this
vein,
it is important to remember that the critical question is not what IS
has
contributed in the past, but what ASIS&T and information scientists
still
do for the world, and what they can do in the coming years so that
future
generations have a history.
References:
Data Bases in the Humanities and Social Sciences. (1982-)
Osprey Press, Fl., 1982-94. 6 vols, various editors; McCrank, L. J.,
ed. (1992
conference, 1994). DBHSS proceedings are still available from
Information
Today, Medford, NJ.
Gasse-Grandjean, Marie-Jose (ed.) (Spring 2003). La
Diplomaticque. In: Le Medieviste et L'Orinateur.
Paris, FR: Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes. 110 p.
Lalou, Elisbeth; Ducourtieux, Christine (eds.) (Winter 2002). L'appot
cognitif. In: Le Medieviste et L'Orinateur. Paris,
FR: Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes. 104 p.
McCrank, Lawrence J. (c. 2001; 2002). Historical Information
Science: An Emergning Unidiscpline. Medford, NJ: Information
Today. 1190 pp., 6000 citation bib.
From: W. Val. Metanomski (5/03)
I have read with interest a
statement on "What Has Information Science Contributed to the World" by
Trudi
Bellardo Hahn in the April/May 2003 issue of the ASIST Bulletin.
Since I have worked on some aspects of the history of
scientific and technological information science, I am taking the
liberty of contributing some comments.
I could not agree more with all the succinctly stated five points
delineating progress in the research, development and application of
information science. But I think that some important aspects have not
been sufficiently highlighted with respect, for instance, to
information science in chemistry, and in science and technology in
general. There has been a real revolution in scientific pathways
between the producer of chemical information and the consumer
of chemical information, who more often than not is also a producer of
information. There is some hint of
it in Item 3 with reference to "the development of online database
systems accompanied by related telecommunications and networking
technologies", but that brings to mind improved telecommunications such
as better equipment, faster switching systems, new satellites, and the
like, and it does not highlight a modern scientist-to-scientist
interaction.
In the old days, the producer of information had to publish it
somewhere, this was then abstracted and indexed, and eventually through
laborious manual searches the user found it and applied thus gained
knowledge
to his own research or application. The electronic searches of
databases
improved the searching tremendously, but originally it had to be
mediated
by information professionals. The advent of electronic terminals or
personal computers
on almost everybody's desk has allowed not
only finding the needed information, often through ingenious front end
software, but also the various links (once called "hyperlinks")
which provide an instant access to the original full-text documents,
be it the primary journals, chemical dictionaries, inventories of
chemical
compounds, listings of properties, etc. All of this occurs at the
speed
of light while the chemist sits at his desk and simply pushes a few
appropriate
keys. Actually some of this is hinted in the topics for the ASIST
2003
Annual Meeting "Humanizing Information Technology; from Ideas to Bits
and
Back".
I understand the need for brief statements on the major
accomplishments, but I still think that another major category
should be: "Information science developers revolutionized pathways
between the producers and
users of information, allowing almost instantaneous retrieval of
needed
complete information, as well as instantaneous direct personal contact
between the concerned individuals." This category is needed to do
justice
to that aspect of information science. Obviously, I am alluding above
to
the e-mail and World Wide Web as well.
From: Barbara Flood: (5/03) These are the contributions that come immediately
to mind: Information storage, dissemination, retrieval, use, and
evaluation.
Starting with microforms (including aspect cards, microcards, both tape
and cassette microfilm, and fiche in various reduction rations) and
applied reprography (contributed to standardization with various ANSI
committees).
Storage: use of various 'newer' methodologies for information (e.g.,
variable length string structures) to punched paper tape, punch cards
(both Rem-Rand & IBM) as well as Termatrex (Jonkers), Zator edge
notched (Calvin Mooers) cards with or without specialized coding.
Also abstracting including 'slanted' abstracts, extracts,
automatic. Various indexing
technologies. Indexing formats included inverted (Taube at Doc
Inc)
Termatrex, coordinate, KWC KWOC, SWOC, etc, Permuterm, citation,
automatic.
Dissemination: e.g., Watson in 1939 with scientific material on
fiche, ISI with Current Contents in 1960's, SDI in late 1960's and
early 1970's, IEG's (Information Exchange Groups), OATS = Original
Article Tear Sheets from ISI.
Systems approach i.e., many products off same database with CAS,BIOSIS,
INSPECT, Engineering INdex, various government including NTIS,
ASTIA, etc.
Search: Boolean (of coordinate indexing), of edge-notched cards,
weighted term (Salton, Marronb) Info theoretic, various linguistic
methods using term frequencies, citation.
See also Joe Becker, The First Book of Information Science (Washington,
DC: US Energy Research and Development Administration, Office of Public
Affairs, 1973.)
Use: array of user studies in late 60's e.g., analysis of networks of
scholars by Crawford and also Garvey & Griffith
Evaluation: recall and relevance starting with the Cranfield studies,
later impact factor. Usual management techniques.
Also pioneered the application of so-called information technologies in
the social sciences and humanities as well as in various community
applications (urban, rural) in addition to the sciences
Translation, Technical writing and Editing, Information Analysis
Centers.
From: Julian Warner (5/03)
I have read the chronology carefully and was very impressed by it
and fascinated by some of the images.
In my view, more could be made of technology influencing consciousness
(consider the personal computer and information society
speculations). Shannon's work (
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/work.html )
would be a starting point. The public conception of the
information
revolution might have more to do with Shannon and associated ideas than
information and libraries.
Some notes made while reading the chronology follow.
Growing specialisation since the 17th century.
Early association with chemistry.
Early 19th century development of review articles / annual reviews.
Early interest in nomenclature.
Message transmission systems preceded analytical systems in their
full public development.
Discontinuity with Avagadro.
Technologies giving greater control of complexity: and recurrent
concern with nomenclature.
From:
Albert Henderson (5/03) I would add items which go beyond your number 5:
... formulating national policies related to issues of privacy,
security .... One describes the productivity of information.
Fritz Machlup summarized "'Productivity of R&D' thus comes to refer
to the ultimate output increments (or input economies) in the areas in
which the new knowledge, the direct output of R&D, is applied." He
continued, "...R&D expenditures are investment, and the incremental
outputs (or economies) attributable to the application of the R&D
findings are return." (1) In other words, savings come with
improved outputs rather than as reduced inputs.
Another is the observation that human beings lack the capacity to cope
with the rising tide of discovery. William D. Garvey described
the scientists' problem concisely: "Even if they had perfect retrieval
systems they would be presented with so many items that they could not
assimilate and process them." (2) The recommendations of the 1963
President's Science Advisory Committee responded: 1. The technical
community must recognize that
handling of technical information is a worthy and integral part of
science.... We shall cope with the information explosion, in the long
run, only if some scientists are prepared to commit themselves deeply
to the job of sifting, reviewing, and synthesizing information; i.e.,
to handling information with sophistication and meaning, not merely
mechanically. Such scientists must create new science, not just shuffle
documents: their activities of reviewing, writing books, criticizing,
and synthesizing are as much a part of science as is traditional
research." It also said, "The ideas and data that are
the substance of science and technology are embodied in the literature;
only if the literature remains a unity can science itself be unified
and
viable. Yet, because of the tremendous growth of the literature, there
is
danger of science fragmenting into a mass of repetitious findings, or
worse,
into conflicting specialties that are not recognized as being
mutually inconsistent.
This is the essence of the "crisis" in scientific and technical
information."
(3) I feel this is worth repeating because the science policy
establishment
turned away from information science as soon as the United States
landed
a man on the Moon. The mandate of the Science Policy Act of 1976 (4) to
include
an expert in dissemination on the panel advising the President on
matters
of science and technology was instantly abandoned. The National Science
Foundation ended its interest in research into
science communications. In spite of libraries being recognized as
research overhead by Office of Management and Budget Circular
A-21, science agencies and universities treat libraries as if
they had no role in the preparation of research proposals,
authorship, and peer review. Nonetheless, the pair of important seminal
discoveries are on the books, should anyone ever
again care.
1. Machlup, Fritz. The Production and Distribution of Knowledge
in the United States. Princeton: University Press. 1962.
2. Garvey, William D. 1979. Communication: The Essence of Science.
Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1979.
3. President's Science Advisory Committee [PSAC]. Science, Government,
and Information. The Responsibilities of the Technical Community
and
the Government in the Transfer of Information. Washington DC: Gov't
Print.
Off. 1963.
4. Public Law 94-282; 42 USC 6601+