SAMENVATTING INFORMATION
SCIENCE; THE BASICS
JUDITH PINTAR & DAVID HOPPINGS
INTRODUCTION
The quality of education in a community will either support or undermine the ability of its
members to locate online information, ascertain its accuracy, and protect their privacy.
Education has emerged as one of the key factors driving information inequity and
growing divide between ‘information rich’ and ‘information poor’.
Practices information science:
1. Classification
2. Organization
3. Retrieval
4. Analysis
5. Utilization
6. Governance
7. Management
8. Study
9. Design
10. Experession
11. Preservation
WHAT IS INFORMATION?
Information flows continuously around is, yet we may be unconscious of the role it plays.
Every moment of the day we take in and process sensory experiences that we sort and
store.
Procedural memories (things we know how to do) are stored in both rain and body.
The term ‘information’ is chimerical. As a noun it describs physical objects or digital
documents that contain meaningful content encoded in text or images, but wwe also use
the word to describe casual speech in which information is passed (gossip).
DIKW PYRAMID
Information is often presented as a discrete stage between ‘data’ and ‘knowledge’ on a
path towards wisdom. In this pyramid, data is placed at the bottom and wisdom at the
top. The DIKW hierarchy solidified a generally accepted idea that data is potential
information, lacking meaning until analysis extracts meaningful information from it (data
and information often used as synonyms).
,Only information about knowledge can be collected and shared. Knowledge and wisdom
each have multiple context-bound cultural meanings as well, further complicating the
situation.
We are left to conclude that the contradictions attending the term information don’t seem
to e particularly problematic for the field. There is insight to be found in attempts to
bridge the gaps in understanding, even between dramatically different approaches.
Consequence of complexity: when it matters, we have to be precise.
Far from being a liability, it is this extraordinary breadth of relevance that allows the
interdisciplinary field of information science to respond to some of the world’s most vexin
problems.
THE CHALLENGE OF DEFINING THE FIELD
In a study from 2003/2005, students ended up producing 50 definitions of information
science.
Schools that tech information science may differ greatly, or hardy from one another. Also
graduate degrees may differ. As a result, faculty employed in degree-granting
information science programs tend to be methodologically diverse.
These unusually generative circumstances have the effect of shifting curricular
conversations from the capacity (what are programs on a campus able to teach) to the
territory (which programs have the right to offer courses about which topics etc). So, the
question of what information science is cannot be separated from the politics and
economics of the academe. How information science appears within any given
instititutional structure today will reflect nationa, regional and local campus politics.
Often is suggested that information science should forego the label of ‘discipline’
altogether and refer to ‘a field of study’. Another strategy is to cast information science
itno the plural form ‘information sciences’.
The name change reflects the argument that the field of information science must
increase its reach if it is to respond effectively to raaidly evolving information systems,
technologies etc, and to provide comprehensive training for all information professions:
traditional, the emerging and the yet-to-be imagined
AN INVITATION TO INFORMATION SCIENCE
C. Wright Mills beschreef de "sociologische verbeelding" als een manier om het
individuele leven te begrijpen binnen bredere sociale contexten. Peter Berger legde de
methoden van sociologie uit, gericht op sociale factoren in plaats van individuele metrics.
Dit heeft invloed gehad op intellectuele gesprekken die tot vandaag voortduren.
De transitie van analoge naar digitale opslag leidde tot de opkomst van internet, mobiele
telefoons, en nieuwe manieren van informatie delen en bewaren. Dit heeft echter ook
kwetsbaarheden gecreëerd, zoals misbruik van "Big Data."
Informatiewetenschap is interdisciplinair omdat het inzichten combineert uit diverse
disciplines zoals informatica, sociologie, psychologie, en recht. Het vakgebied onderzoekt
zowel de technologische als de sociale aspecten van informatie, van hoe systemen
worden ontworpen en gebruikt tot de ethische en maatschappelijke gevolgen van
,informatie. Informatiewetenschappers bestuderen de interactie tussen technologie en
samenleving, wat hen in staat stelt om complexe informatiesystemen en de bredere
impact op individuen en gemeenschappen te begrijpen. Dit maakt samenwerking tussen
verschillende vakgebieden essentieel om informatie effectief te beheren en te
analyseren.
H2: CLASSIFYING INFORMATION
THE ORIGINS OF CLASSIFICATION
Kallimachos: poet, scholar and librarian who is responsible for maintaining the Pinakes,
the catalog of the library’s collections, which eventually grew so large that it required 120
papyrus scrolls ot record it. Creator of classiciation system used in ancient Egyptian
Library of Alexandra.
Pinakes/pinax: wooden tablet, referred to the clay markers that hung above the pots that
contained the scrolls.
Library collections were classified in 2 categories: literature and nonfiction
Literature subdivided into: epic, elegy, iambics, melodrama, tragedy, comedy
Nonfiction subdivided into: history, rhetorics, philosophy, medicine, law.
Kallimachos system was influenced by Aristotles approach by his pupil who created and
organized summaries of opinions/ideas of philosophers. These were recorded into
documents called doxographies.
The catalog of Kallimachos did not provide way to locate the scrolls in the library, so
scholars still needed to ask librarians where to look.
Liu Xin: The seven epitomes: contained classification. Main categories: six arts, various
masters, poems and rhapsodies, military writings, calculations and methods, recipes and
techniques. Missing: laws and statues.
LIBRARIES AND CATALOGS
Finding aids: organizational tools that help people discover what they are looking for in
collections. Common kinds: catalogs and indexes.
difference reflects difference between information understood as a container of
meaningful content and the meaningful content that it contains.
Catalog = list of names of items in a collection
Bibliography = common kind of catalog that lists written works organized by author. In
contrast, an index is often organized by the topics in a collection.
Before the era of digital storage, the most common finding aid in a library was the long
wooden filing cabinet, containing stacks full of alphabetized 3’’ x 5’’ cards. One card
would be in a drawer alphabetized by the author’s last name, another could be found by
searching for the title of the book, and a third would be sorted by subject area.
, this multiple index strategy increased chances that library patrons would be successful
in locating what they were looking for. The cards contained descriptive information about
the book and its contents:
- Technical description; related to its physical form (size, nr of pages, type of
binding)
- Identifying description; related to its meaningful content (author’s full name,
birthdate, name of co-author, illustrator, translator etc.)
- Administrative description; related to the third aspect of information, process of
accessing the physical book (could it be borrowed locally, was it located in the rare
book room, shelf location or notification that it was missing)
3’’ X 5’’ cards: Carl Linnaeus
- Invented binomial nomenclature; naming system for biological species.
Hoe het systeem werkte:
3x5 kaarten: Dit verwijst naar het formaat van de kaarten die werden gebruikt,
namelijk 3 inch bij 5 inch (ongeveer 7,6 x 12,7 cm). Deze kaarten waren de basis
voor het systeem.
Informatie op de kaarten: Op elke kaart werd informatie genoteerd over een
specifiek item, zoals de titel van een boek, de auteur, het onderwerp, het jaar van
publicatie, en andere relevante gegevens.
Classificatie: De kaarten werden vaak geordend op basis van een
indexeringssysteem, zoals het Dewey Decimal Systeem of het Library of Congress
Classification Systeem, en opgeslagen in kaartenbakken of mappen.
Zoeken en vinden: Wanneer iemand op zoek was naar een specifiek item,
konden ze door de kaarten bladeren om de relevante informatie te vinden en het
item in de fysieke collectie op te sporen.
Dewey decimal system: established systematic use of index cards and provided a
standardized template for classification of library holdings. Named after Melvil Dewey,
who proposed the system in 1876, it was developed and amended by generations of
librarians. Dewey was a serial sexual harasser. After 2019 (#metoo) his name was
removed from the melvil dewey medal awarded annually by the ALA.
Library school at university of illinoius (Katherine sharp)
- Responsible for training a generation of women who subsequently wet west to jobs
in publica and academic libraries across US
Vivian Hars: first black woman to be credentialed librarian in Chicago.
CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS
Dewey decimal system standardized the practices of assigning a 4-part code to every
work in a library
10 categories:
- 000 computer science
- 100 philosophy and psychology
