The purpose of this chapter is to review historical writings about the development of information science (IS) or certain aspects of it rather than to review historic events and figures in the development of IS. We have reviewed the available literature, preferring but not limiting ourselves to formal historical writing, the kind that professional historians produce. An earlier version of this review (BUCKLAND & LIU) appeared in the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, which had had two prior chapters dealing, in part, with the history of IS. In 1977, in the chapter entitled" History and Foundations of Information Science," SHERA & CLEVELAND included a historical introduction to the field, and some of the literature reviewed was about the history of IS. A significant part of the chapter by RICHARDS (1992) addressed the history of information science in the Soviet Union.
It would have been foolish to have attempted to include every field that invokes the word" information." Instead this review is based on the authors' perceptions of the principal interests of the membership of the American Society for Information Science (ASIS) since its foundation in 1937 as the American Documentation Institute. In this view, IS is centered on the representation, storage, transmission, selection (filtering, retrieval), and the use of documents and messages, where documents and messages are created for use by humans. Interest extends outwards in many directions because of the need to understand contextual, institutional, methodological, technological, and theoretical aspects. We recognize that many other views are possible and hope that others will prepare reviews from other perspectives. Within this field, from about 1960 the phrases" information science" and" information retrieval" were adopted, largely replacing the older term" documentation." We recognize this continuity by treating" documentation," when used in this context, as a synonym for IS. We have treated IS inclusively in two senses. First, we include specialized applications areas, such as archival, library, and corporate information services as specialties within a broad view of IS rather than specialties outside of it. Second, we agree with VAKKARI (1994a) that it is misguided on theoretical grounds (as well as difficult in practice) to separate the theory of library science and of documentation from that of IS. Given the limitations of space and time we have been selective in our coverage of the many application areas and the enabling techniques and technologies. Where the bibliography of topics within our scope is already well developed, notably in the history of information technology and of library services, we could afford to be even more selective. Nevertheless, this review inevitably reflects the very uneven distribution of historical writings within our scope, notably the very heavy concentration on library history and, to a lesser extent, on bibliographic control. Given our perspective, IS a dynamic but not a new field. Indeed 1995 marked the centenary of one historic event, the establishment in Brussels of what is now the International Federation for Information and Documentation in which many modern IS ideas were pioneered. The arrangement of this review is based on the classification scheme used in Information Science Abstracts, as follows: Introduction; Background; History of Information Science; Techniques and Technology; Information-Related Behavior; Application Areas; Social Aspects; Education for Information Science; Institutions; Individuals; Geographic Areas; and Conclusions. We focus on the literature from 1989 to date, with older writings included selectively. The coverage is 1international, but most of the material known to us is published in the United States, and it seems impractical to separate general treatments from writings emphasizing the United States.
}, year = {1995}, journal = {Annual Review of Information Science and Technology}, volume = {30}, pages = {385-418}, language = {English}, }