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Reference Sources and Services
Notes
2 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
Introduction
Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the analysis, collection,
classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information. Practitioners within
the field study the application and usage of knowledge in organizations, along with the interaction
between people, organizations and any existing information systems, with the aim of creating,
replacing, improving or understanding information systems. Information science is often considered
a branch of computer science. However, it is actually a broad, interdisciplinary field, incorporating
not only aspects of computer science, but often diverse fields such as archival science, cognitive science,
commerce, communications, law, library science, musicology, management, mathematics, philosophy,
public policy, and the social sciences.
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,
information science can be seen 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 must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately
permeating all other subsystems of society”. Within information science, attention has been given
in recent years to human–computer interaction, groupware, the semantic web, value sensitive design,
iterative design processes and to the ways people generate, use and find information. Today, this
field is called the Field of Information, and there are a growing number of Schools and Colleges of
Information.
Information science should not be confused with information theory, the study of a
particular mathematical concept of information, or with library science, a field related
to libraries which uses some of the principles of information science.
1.1 Documentary Sources of Information
th
“The most valuable assets of a 20 century company were its production equipment. The most valuable
st
asset of a 21 century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers
and their productivity”.
Today’s workforce, largely professionals known as knowledge workers, spends a
great deal of its time creating, using and communicating knowledge. Currently
knowledge workers spend an average of 9.25 hours per week just gathering and
analyzing data. For more than two decades, information seeking end-user research
has consistently shown that professional knowledge workers spend, on average,
25% of their workweek seeking and analyzing information. Of that time, 50% is
spent analyzing the information. Also, individuals intuitively cease information
seeking after spending 20-25% of their time doing so because a) other work-related
tasks have become more important and b) they perceive further effort will yield
insufficient results to warrant more time expenditure.
It is the generation, transfer, and reuse of both external and internal information in the form of
knowledge that distinguishes information as an asset. If information is the raw material of knowledge
work, then the relationship between an organization’s productivity and its information services is