What is Information Science?

1. What is Information Science? A talk. G. Benoît, Ph.D. Simmons College

2. Welcome. Education: Ph. D., UCLA, Information Seeking as Communicative Action M. S., Columbia University B. A., Univ. of California (double major) Research: Mathematical models of full-text retrieval; interactive information retrieval; philosophy of language; apply these ideas to bioinformatics, cross-language information retrieval, visualization and human cognition Will give a brief talk to provide an overview. Will be very happy to answer the technical aspects (in depth!) and any other question after the talk.

3. Introduction • 1967: American Documentation Institute becomes American Society for Information Science • 1968: Borko asks “Information Science: what is it?” • His initial definition …

4. “Information science is that discipline that investigates the properties and behavior of information, the forces governing the flow of information, and the means of processing information for optimum accessibility and usability. It is concerned with that body of knowledge relating to the origination, collection, organization, storage, retrieval, interpretation, transmission, transformation, and utilization of information. This includes the investigation of information representations in both natural and artificial systems, the use of codes for efficient message transmission, and the study of information processing devices and techniques such as computers and their programming systems. It is an interdisciplinary science derived from and related to such fields as mathematics, logic, linguistics, psychology, computer technology, operations research, the graphic arts, communications, library science, management, and other similar fields. It has both a pure science component, which inquires into the subject without regard to its application, and an applied science component, which develops services and products” (Borko, 1968, 3).

5. Some movements • IBM and the birth of full-text retrieval • Hans-Peter Luhn, KWIC, KWOC • Scientific Environment • “Desk Set” mentality • Social and Political fears of technology • Benefits of technology • Money, Big Money! • Business • Government

6. Areas of Work - 9 categories • Information needs & uses (behavioral studies; citation; communication patterns; literature use studies) • Document creation & copying (computer-assisted composition; writing & editing) • Language analysis (computational linguistics; lexicography, natural language processing; psycholinguistics; semantic analysis) • Translation (machine translation; translation aids) • Abstracting, classification, coding & indexing (content analysis; machine-aided classification; extracting, indexing, vocabulary studies) (continued on next slide)

7. Areas of Work - 9 categories • System Design (information centers; information retrieval; mechanism of library operations; dissemination of information) • Analysis & Evaluation (comparative studies; indexing quality; modeling; test methods and performance measures) • Pattern Recognition (image processing; speech analysis) • Adaptive systems (artificial intelligence; automata; problem solving; self-organizing systems)

8. Librarianship goes a different direction • 1960-70s - Emphasis on “access” - but redefined • ALA Bill of Rights (Berninghausen): “codify and standardize a purist moral stance on intellectual freedom on which impartiality and neutrality on nonliterary issues served as the central principle of the profession” • “Rallying point for social action” (Wedgeworth & al., 1973) • Tired of “social and political indifference … bitter about a government incapable of solving racial and poverty problems…” (Glassing, 1970)

9. Borko’s definition revisited • Work areas: • Information science is “an interdisciplinary science that investigates the properties and behavior of information, the forces that govern the flow and use of information, and the techniques, both manual and mechanical, of processing information for optimal storage, retrieval, and dissemination” (Borko, 1968, p 5) • [Italics are mine … more on those points later]

10. Behind Borko’s definition • Emphasizes the vast influences that accessed data can have on people • The shift from the 1960s of “scientific” investigation into the processes associated with access • Linguistic expectations: of terms in documents, of queries; matching them (IR) as symbol manipulation systems • Social, political, technical issues “governing the flow and use of information”

11. Today … • Bates: paradigms (under the sea) • Saracevic: social, IR, relationship to computer science & librarianship • White & McCain: co-citation analysis • Hawkins: concept maps • Capurro & Hjørland: philosophy • Webber: split of perspectives

12. Webber’s view of the problem • Hard science/soft science split • Lack of theoretical foundations • Research crosses disciplines • No “explicit theories” or laws of its own • Either is too practice-oriented … or not practice-oriented enough! [Figure that one out!]

13. Parallels to other fields • Physics uses math as a tool … • … do we conclude that Physics isn’t a discipline? • Notice, tho, that these two fields share properties: (a) the forms of analysis and (b) methods of verification to explain & demonstrate, and (c) (socially) to validate • Leads to empiricism … but first …

14. Relationship to Librarianship • Librarianship education: • 1980s - programming required • Statistics • Expectation that LIS is committed to its goals and takes responsibility for the social and technical facets of access • Abandoning of technical/science issues (equipment, modes of evaluation, &c) left to Computer Science

15. The artificial division • CS, like physics (and IS), relies on math to help define problems and validate solutions • CS, like other disciplines interested in information, uses the same technology: databases, full-text retrieval, language issues in IR, &c. • Increasingly CS and informatics define themselves in what Librarianship has traditionally done as its work!

16. CS and L (IS) • Some research agendas in CS are the same as most in IS! • Librarianship seems to emphasize the individual’s info needs and social face of “resources becoming information” • Intentionality: users expect that materials are intentionally gathered for their benefit • Abstraction: meaningful subsets of data are represented abstractly (surrogates)

17. CS and L (IS) • Librarianship’s “objectivity” stops at understanding the user’s actual interpretation and use of resources (naturalized epistemology [Quine]) • CS by definition assumes (declares!) that its product is (a) infallible and (b) automatically useful, hence “information.”

18. CS and L (IS) and … • As physics and other fields are bound to mathematics (because of the shared tools, assumptions of what questions are useful, what methods are appropriate, &c), so CS and IS are bound to match … • As CS and IS perform some of the same functions as Librarianship, so these three are bound together.

19. What bars the kinship? • The socialization of practitioners (Suzuki 1998; Lave & Wenger) • Understanding of science in general society • Understanding of technology in academic settings (“Administrators just don’t understand”).

20. So far … and other developments • IS is applying technical models (math and CS equipment) to fulfilling the goals of librarianship. Research programs in LIS, then, necessarily Janus-like, turn one face to librarianship and one to mathematics/computer science. • Whence informatics? • Example of data mining.

21. The Wrong Direction? • What does it mean that a field is viewed by some as not having its own theories and methods? • Bates: her idea of metafield that stands outside other fields. She claims that the fields mental activities center around “representation and organization of info rather than knowing info” … begs the question of just what “information” is!

22. Wrong direction? • Saracevic: social roles, but emphasizes IR and as a result sees IS as an intermediary between computer sci (which “owns” the tech issues) and librarianship (which “owns” the human access issue). • But exposes the “Org. of Info” question: from data to useful access through pre-coordination by the librarians

23. Wrong direction? • White and McCain: define by publishing trends: doesn’t really define the field, but how researchers’ work can create an image of the boundary, but not a real definition • Continues to define IS, its work, and its methods in terms of other fields and other value systems … uncritically.

24. What should LIS do? • Whether or not IS has its own theoretical foundation may not even be the appropriate question to ask. • Normative and Descriptive: White and McCain’s review cd have been normative: expose the value system of IS. • Why objectivity? “Fair, absence of bias” and “Exists outside one’s mind” (thus rely on observation of the world (empiricism)

25. Empiricism • Steve Shapen argues that mainstream empiricism often operates within the fantasy that each individual can observationally test hypotheses for himself. … urges people to be distrustful of authority and look directly at the world. • Encourages/privileges an “objective” view of what questions to ask, what methods are useful, what solutions are acceptable. • Idea of prediction based on past events.

26. Empiricism • Trust… • “ … almost every move that a scientist makes depends on elaborate networks of cooperation and trust” (Godfrey-Smith, 2003, 12) • Shd we accept empiricism as the source of all knowledge in the world? • Difficult to determine what kinds of experience are relevant to the test of hypotheses and working out who can be trusted…

27. Empiricism and a definition of IS • Same phenomenon, different conclusions • Share an empiricist foundation and work “scientifically”, that is conduct research in (1) an organized and • (2) systematic fashion and • (3) be responsive to experience

28. Mathematics and a definition of IS • Use of math as a tool to understand the natural world … • But still don’t know what makes “information science” different from other forms of investigation.

29. Social structure and defintion of IS • The social structure of IS: • IS as scientific in its approach to research • Profits from the relationship to math • But is informed by related fields and its own history. • IS is informed by history, sociology, communications theory, and computer science/math • These shape IS’s own social structure.

30. Towards the defintion. • We might say IS is in Kuhn’s “crisis phase” • [Kuhn also says scientists tend to become interested in philosophy during crisis phase, a field he dismisses otherwise] • What, then, is information science?!

31. Information Science is… • A social structure • Whose members see access to data as its highest value • Through empirical study of the transformation of data into cause-for-action as a result of human cognition, • Which uses math as a tool • And technology as the physical channel of access • To inform, and to be informed by, other social structures, especially librarianship whose other principles it shares.

32. Thank you.Questions?