Information science (abbreviated as infosci) is an academic field that is primarily concerned with the analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information. Practitioners within and outside the field engage in the study of knowledge application and usage in organizations. Additionally, they examine the interaction between people, organizations, and any existing information systems. The objective of this study is to create, replace, improve, or understand the information systems.
Disciplines and related fields Historically, information science has evolved as a transdisciplinary field, both drawing from and contributing to diverse domains.
Core foundations Technical and computational: informatics, computer science, data science, network science, information theory, discrete mathematics, statistics and analytics Information organization: library science, archival science, documentation science, knowledge representation, ontologies, organization studies Human dimensions: human-computer interaction, cognitive psychology, information behavior, social epistemology, philosophy of information, information ethics and science and technology studies
Applied contexts Information science methodologies are applied across numerous domains, reflecting the discipline's versatility and relevance. Key application areas include:
Health and life sciences: health informatics, bioinformatics Cultural and social contexts: digital humanities, computational social science, social media analytics, social informatics, computational linguistics Spatial information: geographic information science, environmental informatics Organizational settings: knowledge management, business analytics, decision support systems, information economics Security and governance: cybersecurity, intelligence analysis, information policy, IT law, legal informatics Education and learning: educational technology, learning analytics The interdisciplinary nature of information science continues to expand as new technological developments and social practices emerge, creating innovative research frontiers that bridge traditional disciplinary boundaries.
Foundations
Scope and approach Information science focuses on understanding problems from the perspective of the stakeholders involved and then applying information and other technologies as needed. In other words, it tackles systemic problems first rather than individual pieces of technology within that system. In this respect, one can see information science as a response to technological determinism, the belief that technology "develops by its own laws, that it realizes its own potential, limited only by the material resources available and the creativity of its developers. It must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society." Many universities have entire colleges, departments or schools devoted to the study of information science, while numerous information-science scholars work in disciplines such as communication, healthcare, computer science, law, and sociology. Several institutions have formed an I-School Caucus (see List of I-Schools), but numerous others besides these also have comprehensive information specializations. Within information science, current issues as of 2013 include:
Human–computer interaction for science Groupware The Semantic Web Value sensitive design Iterative design processes The ways people generate, use and find information
Definitions The first known usage of the term "information science" was in 1955. An early definition of Information science (going back to 1968, the year when the American Documentation Institute renamed itself as the American Society for Information Science and Technology) states:
"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 authenticity 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, 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, p. 3).
Related terms Some authors use informatics as a synonym for information science. This is especially true when related to the concept developed by A. I. Mikhailov and other Soviet authors in the mid-1960s. The Mikhailov school saw informatics as a discipline related to the study of scientific information. Informatics is difficult to precisely define because of the rapidly evolving and interdisciplinary nature of the field. Definitions reliant on the nature of the tools used for deriving meaningful information from data are emerging in Informatics academic programs. Regional differences and international terminology complicate the problem. Some people note that much of what is called "Informatics" today was once called "Information Science" – at least in fields such as Medical Informatics. For example, when library scientists also began to use the phrase "Information Science" to refer to their work, the term "informatics" emerged:
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