16916 words
Theoretical development of information science: A brief history
Birger Hjørland
University of Copenhagen, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark
Abstract
This paper presents a brief history of information science(IS) as viewed by the author. The term ‘information science’ goes back to 1955 and evolved in the aftermath of Claude Shannon’s ‘information theory’ (1948), which alsoinspired research into problems in fields of library science and documentation. These subjects were a mainfocus of what became established as ‘information science’, which from 1964 onwards was often termed ‘library and informationscience’ (LIS).However, the usefulness of Shannon’s information theory as the theoretical foundation of the field was been challenged. Among the strongest “paradigms” in the field is a tradition derived from the Cranfield experiments in the 1960s and the bibliometric research following the publication of Science Citation Index from 1963 and forward. Among the competingtheoretical frameworks, ‘the cognitive view’ became influential from the 1970s. Today informationscience is very fragmented, but a growing number of researchers find that the problems in the field should be related to theories of knowledge and understoodfrom a social and cultural perspective, thereby re-establishing connections with idea’s such as social epistemology which may have remained implicit in in the field much of the time.
1. Introduction
This paper briefly expounds theoretical developments in information science (IS). In practice information science today may be considered synonym with library and information science, LIS (see Hjørland, 2013for a more detailed discussion). This article is based on former accounts of the subject (e.g. Wersig 2003; Bates 2005 and Talja, Tuominenand Savolainen 2005). Information science has, however, a very disordered history, and the former descriptions need to be reconsidered and extended. Therefore, this article attempts to fill a gap and to provide a broad overview ofthe theoretical development of the field. It is necessarily selective and also subjective in the sense that it reflects the priorities made by the author. As Pierre Bourdieu wrote about his outline of the history of another field:
It is clear that it is not easy to construct the history of the sociology of science [or, as here, of information science], not only because of the vast volume of ‘literature’ but also because this is a field in which the history of the discipline is at stake (among others) in struggles. Each of the protagonists develops a vision of this history consistent with the interests linked to the position he occupies within the history; the different historical accounts are oriented according to the position of their producer and cannot claim the status of indisputable truth (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 9)
The point of departure in this paper is the term “information science” which according Shapiro (1995)was quoined by Jason Farradane (1955).It was established in the same period as were concepts such as ‘information technology’, ‘information processing’ and ‘information storage and retrieval’ appeared. All these terms seems to owe their appearance to the new ‘information theory’developed by, among others, communications engineer Claude Shannon (1948)in the article A Mathematical Theory of Communication. AsProffitt (2010) noted about the Oxford English Dictionary’s coverage of the term “information”:
“The Supplement’s editors identified and included many of the earliest compounds evoking the sense of information as data, something to be stored, processed, or distributed electronically: information processing, information retrieval, information storage (all three dated from 1950). In quick succession came terms relating to the academic study of the phenomenon, appearing in a neatly logical sequence: first the idea (information theory, 1950), next its budding adherents (information scientist, 1953), then the established field of study (information science, 1955).”
Shannon’s (1948)‘information theory’seems therefore to be the direct or indirect reason for establishing ‘information science’ about seven years later. One may claim, however, that the field is older, that only the label is new. Rayward (1994, p. 238), for example, wrotethat PaulOtlet’s (1934) Traité de Documentationis one of the first information science textbooks (implying that the content of information science is older than the name; see also Hjørland, in press c). We shall return to this “pre-history of information science” below and here start with Shannon, who brought not just a new theory, but in a much stronger way the idea that a theory in this field is possible at all.Shannon’s theory brought a new conception of ‘information’, which inthe narrow sense is something which can be measured (e.g. in ‘bits’) and in a broader sense has been defined by MichaelBuckland (1991) as “information as thing” and by the Oxford English Dictionary as:
[2]d. Separated from, or without the implication of, reference to a person informed: that which inheres in one of two or morealternative sequences, arrangements, etc., that produce different responses in something, and which is capable of being stored in,transmitted by, and communicated to inanimate things. [Oxford English dictionary, 2010 update]
Although information science thus seemingly owes its name to Shannon’s information theory, it also developed out of libraryscience and documentation; but, as we shall see below, information theory that founded the field bearing the name ‘information science’ later lost influence as other theoreticalframeworks became more important.
2. Selected aspects of the prehistory of information science
Fields like ‘library science’, ‘the science of bibliography’, ‘scientific information’ and ‘documentation’ can beunderstood as the predecessors of information science.
Called bibliography, documentation, and scientific information during the first five decades of the twentieth century, the fieldbecame known as information science in the early 1960s. (Kline, 2004)Pre-Ref
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One demonstration of this was the change in name that the American Documentation Institute (founded in 1937)underwent when it became the American Society for Information Science in 1968 (now the Association for InformationScience & Technology). The many names for fields that are sometimes synonyms and sometimes separate fields inrelation to information science, as well as their rather complicated relations, are outlined in Hjørland (2013c) and shall not berepeated here.Before the term ‘information science’ was used (i.e. before 1955) fields existed which were concerned with howdocuments are described, classified, organized, communicated and used. In other words information science may beseen as part of a family of fields that all aimed to provide optimal services, systems and infrastructures for differentkinds of user groups. Such systems and services might be termed ‘information systems and information services’;however, this is an extremely broad concept that includes, among others, bibliographical systems and services, memoryinstitutions, scientific and scholarly information systems, documentation systems, management information systems andknowledge organization systems. Many subtypes of what might be considered information systems and services tend toform separate fields of study with separate literatures.Library science, bibliography and documentation are basically about helping people find the books, articles, pictures,music, information and so on they need or would like to read or experience (including digital content and the applicationof advanced information technology), which may be termed document representation and searching (often termed information storage and retrieval). Librarians and information specialists help users retrieve the documents needed to solve tasks, including writing theses and research papers (and to make systems that make such retrieval optimal). They also help to ‘keep the valuable from oblivion’ (Wilson, 1968, p. 1).Thus, prior to the establishment of information science, the core concept was the document. A document should notbe understood in the narrow, everyday meaning, but instead it is ‘any concrete or symbolic indication, preserved orrecorded, for reconstructing or for proving a phenomenon, whether physical or mental’ (Briet, 1951, p.7];here quoted from Buckland (1991, p.47). Briet’s understanding of documents seems to be influenced by semiotic theory, althoughthis is not made explicit in her writings. Her famous example is that an antelope in Africa is not a document, but aspecies that is kept in a zoo is. The example shows that the concept of ‘document’ should be understood in connection todocumenting activities.
Different theoretical views have had their effects in library science, bibliography and documentation. We shall nothere consider them all. Subfields such as information retrieval (IR), knowledge organization (KO), bibliometrics, and information behavior have a long ranges of approaches. The facet analytic school with Ranganathan IN KO, for example, will not be considered (see Hjørland, 2013b). The followingpresentation is thus highly selective and is constructed in order to demonstrate developments considered overall important by the author.
2.1. Melvil Dewey
Library pioneer Melvil Dewey (1851–1931) had a strong practicalist influence on the field. His classification system(DDC) did not attempt to optimize findability in any specific collection or for any specific user group. Nor did it try tofind optimal scientific or philosophical solutions to the problem today termed ‘information retrieval’ (IR). Instead DDC wasa compromise and a standard which could be used by many different collections. His system is the dream of librarymanagement much more than the dream of users. Dewey’s approach may have blocked the development of libraryscience towards becoming a true scholarly field by not connecting the field to philosophy and subject fields. AlthoughDewey felt it important that libraries mediated high-quality books and culture, he saw it as the job of subject specialiststo make the document selection. His library science was thereby reduced to purely technical issues (and such technicalissues were not understood as being connected with content, but were based on a dualistic view of technology andcontent). It is also characteristic of Dewey that he took the cultural values of his time and of his class and sex forgranted: they were not examined, but were considered as given.
2.2. Henry Bliss
Library scientist Henry Evelyn Bliss (1870–1955), on the other hand, based library classification on knowledgedeveloped in science and scholarship. He actually studied the different disciplines in order to learn how scientistsclassified their fields. His main idea was that although there are many different perspectives, it is possible to find overalllines of consensus on which to base bibliographic classification (a view which was in accordance with the logicalpositivism dominant at that time). His view is thus not as practicalist as Dewey’s, but it made library science muchbetter connected to and founded in scholarship, although his view on consensus perhaps seems problematic from the perspectiveof our post-Kuhnian area.
2.3. The documentation movement
The documentation movement has already been mentioned with Briet’s development of the concept of “document” as abroad term related to a semiotic point of view in which a document is understood as a sign used to document something.The founders of this movement were Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Henri Lafontaine (1854-1943). This movement is not limited to libraries, but focuses on bibliography and the task to provide documentation servicesbased on subject analysis and classification, but also on providing abstracts and using the most advanced informationtechnology. Documentation (and the concept of document and the – often implicitly - underlying semiotic philosophy)lost influence with the growing influence of the term “information” (see Hjørland, 2000). It is important to say, however, that animportant re-introduction of documentation theory with the concept of documents has taken place with informationscience (see Buckland,1991a; Hjørland, 2000, 2002; Frohmann, 2004; Furner, 2004; Lund, 2008 andØrom, 2007).
2.4. Social epistemology
Library scientist Jesse Shera (1903–1982) and his colleague Margaret Egan (1905–1959) developed a conception termed‘social epistemology’. Shera found that ‘previously, librarianship had developed merely “as a body of techniquesevolved from certain ad hoc assumptions about how people use books ...”’ (Shera, 1970, p. 29) and he tried to develop the fieldon the basis of sociological theory. Social epistemology was defined asthe study of those processes by which society as a whole seeks to achieve a perceptive or understanding relation to the totalenvironment---physical, psychological, and intellectual (Egan and Shera, 1952, p. 132; original emphasis). The ‘focus of attention’ of this new discipline should be ‘the analysis of the production, distribution, and utilization of intellectualproducts (Egan and Shera, 1952, pp. 133–134). Jonathan Furner (2002) does not, however, consider Egan and Shera’s social epistemology related to either thelater field known by this name or to the sociology of science; alternatively Furnersuggested that Egan and Shera’s view should be understood as a psychological or individualist approach later to be takenup by the cognitive perspective. I do not fully agree with this view (although Furner indicates some obvious links and also correctly says that their writingshave ‘an air of quaintness when placed alongside representatives of newer sociologies’). Egan and Shera were notsatisfied with the individualist approaches of their own time and tried to formulate an alternative:
As she [Egan] has pointed out, psychologists have studied behaviour with reference to the conduct of the individual;epistemologists have studied the origins, growth, and development of knowledge, but again with reference to the individual. Thesociologists have studied the behaviour of people in groups, but never really with reference to the influence of knowledge uponthat behaviour. In other words, epistemology has never been taken out of the realm of individual’s relation to knowledge andstudied in relation to the sum total of social behaviour, social action. (Shera, 1970, p. 85).
It should be considered thatEgan and Shera wrote at a time, in which Thomas Kuhn’sphilosophy (which is a social epistemology, cf.Wray, 2011) had not yet revolutionized the theory of knowledge. Egan and Shera’s approach was also based on documents (or ‘graphic records’) as the core concept of the field. Aninterpretation in retrospect might be that they too were searching for something like a semiotic theory, in whichthe meaning attributed to documents is determined by human social documenting practices. However, given thebackground knowledge of their time, this project remained somewhat unclear, as indicated by Furner (2002).There are two issues which in my view make Egan and Shera’s approach social (contrary to Furner’s view):
(1) Shera found that librarianship has to be based on subject knowledge:
“[A] good undergraduate major in a subject field is essential to the librarian, and he should pursue his subject specialty as far ashis resources permit” (Shera, 1968, p. 317)
(2)Shera was obviously interested in libraries and their social and cultural importance in a historical perspective (cf., Shera, 1968), which is a perspective clearly distinct from psychological and cognitive approaches. A positive evaluation was also expressed by philosopher and information scientist Patrick Wilson (1927–2003):
Social epistemology with a focus on textual objects and with an eye on the actual and possible roles of information systems is a productive approach to our field (Wilson, 2002, electronic source, no page).
Unfortunately, social approaches were discontinuedor marginalized and less fruitful approaches came to dominate the field in the next decades. Today, however, such social-epistemological conceptions have got a renaissance, as discussed later.
jis.sagepub.co.uk
3. Information theory
As mentioned above, engineer Claude Shannon developed the so-called information theory in 1948 (which, however, isoften considered a misnomer for a theory of data transmission). Information theory is a mathematical theory about thetechnological issues involved whenever data is transmitted, stored or retrieved. Its basic idea is that the harder it is to guess what is received, the more information one has got. The theory involves concepts such ascommunication channels, bandwidth, noise, data transfer rate, storage capacity, signal-to-noise ratio, error rate, feedbackand so on (see Figure 1).
Thomas Haigh (2001, p. 31) describes how Shannon’s theory became affiliated with documentation.
Information gaineda new cachet from ‘information theory’ and Shannon’s information theory resonated far beyond its technical niche.During the late 1950s, ‘information’ seemed scientific, modern, and fashionably. The 1950s saw a flurry of interest inthe problems of ‘scientific information’. Scientific and technical work was being published in unprecedented quantities,spurring interest in technologies and systems to classify, abstract, distribute, and index it. Alarmists warned that an‘information explosion’ threatened Western scientific leadership during the cold war because America’s lack ofcentralized indexing and abstracting left scientists and engineers doomed to repeat previous published work.
Shannon’s ‘information theory’ has been and still is extremely important in engineering and computer science. However, thequestion for us is how important is Shannon’s theory for the field now established as ‘information science’ (or LIS)? Linguist and information scientist Henning Spang-Hanssen (2001, electronic source, no page) wrote:
‘informationtheory’ is not concerned with documents, and not even primarily concerned with the content or meaning of documentsor other symbolic representations, but concentrates on the efficient transmission of signals, which may – or may not –convey meaning. It is therefore unfortunate to confuse the term information theory with information as occurring in“information science” and “information retrieval”.
As already mentioned information theory gave rise to a new understanding of ‘information’ and it became extremelypopular, not just in telecommunications, but also in many other fields, including psychology, and it became common toconsider libraries, journals, reference books and the whole scientific communication system as ‘information storage andretrieval systems’. An example that demonstrates this influence is The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences(Sills, 1968), which contains an overall entry for ‘Information Storage and Retrieval’ (IS&R), which is subdividedinto five subsections:
I: The field [Information Storage and Retrieval] (Becker, 1968).
II: Information services (Mitchell, 1968).
III: Libraries (Shera, 1968).
IV: Reference materials and books (Vose,1968).
V: Bibliographic issues in the behavioral sciences (Bry, 1968).
By assigning these subjects under the label ‘IS&R’ this entry (with its subentries) reflects a new information-theoreticalview of libraries, bibliographies, documentation and the scholarly communication system. On the other hand,information theory is not really considered in the content of the entries. It seems just to be a new label for what wasformerly termed library science or documentation. There is no direct discussion of the relation between subjectspresented and the terms ‘information’, ‘IS&R’ or ‘information theory’, although the article about the field (Becker, 1968) focusedon the application of technology and the creation of a new research field named ‘IS&R’ urged by the problems causedby the so-called ‘information explosion’ (implying the concept of information defined by [Oxford English Dictionary, 2010, sense 2d], and explicitlycriticized by, for example, Buckland (1991b), Spang-Hanssen, 2001). Also the article on information services (Mitchell, 1968) mentioned the application of newtechnology and the paper has ‘the information crisis’ as its point of departure, but at its core the paper reflects atraditional documentation perspective rather than anything inspired by information theory. It should also be mentionedthat Shera (presented above) wrote the section about libraries(Shera, 1968)and if anything this article reflects an alternative to the information-theoretical point of view. It is therefore not convincingly demonstratedthat the subjects described under the label ‘information storage and retrieval’ can adequately and fruitfully be presentedand discussed from the perspective of information theory.On the one hand the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences provides an example of an influence ofinformation theory in information science and on the other hand it indicates that information theory did not influence the content of the field in a deeper way.