Birger Hjørland

Toward a new horizon in information science: domain-analysis

This article is a programmatic article, which formulates a new approach to information science (IS): domain‐analysis. This approach states that the most fruitful horizon for IS is to study the knowledge‐domains as thought or discourse communities, which are parts of societys division of labor. The article is also a review article, providing a multidisciplinary description of research, illuminating this theoretical view. The first section presents contemporary research in IS, sharing the fundamental viewpoint that IS should be seen as a social rather than as a purely mental discipline. In addition, important predecessors to this view are mentioned and the possibilities as well as the limitations of their approaches are discussed. The second section describes recent transdisciplinary tendencies in the understanding of knowledge. In bordering disciplines to IS, such as educational research, psychology, linguistics, and the philosophy of science, an important new view of knowledge is appearing in the 1990s. This new view of knowledge stresses the social, ecological, and content‐oriented nature of knowledge. This is opposed to the more formal, computer‐like approaches that dominated in the 1980s. The third section compares domain‐analysis to other major approaches in IS, such as the cognitive approach. The final section outlines important problems to be investigated, such as how different knowledge‐domains affect the informational value of different subject access points in data bases.

Domain analysis in information science: Eleven approaches: traditional as well as innovative

What kind of knowledge is needed by information specialists working in a specific subject field like medicine, sociology or music? What approaches have been used in information science to produce kinds of domain‐specific knowledge? This article presents 11 approaches to domain analysis. Together these approaches make a unique competence for information specialists. The approaches are: producing literature guides and subject gateways; producing special classifications and thesauri; research on indexing and retrieving specialities; empirical user studies; bibliometrical studies; historical studies; document and genre studies; epistemological and critical studies; terminological studies, LSP (languages for special purposes), discourse studies; studies of structures and institutions in scientific communication; and domain analysis in professional cognition and artificial intelligence. Specific examples and selective reviews of literature are provided, and the strengths and drawbacks of each of these approaches are discussed.

Epistemology and the socio-cognitive perspective in information science

This article presents a socio-cognitive perspective in relation to information science (IS) and information retrieval (IR). The differences between traditional cognitive views and the socio-cognitive or domain-analytic view are outlined. It is claimed that, given elementary skills in computer-based retrieval, people are basically interacting with representations of subject literatures in IR. The kind of knowledge needed to interact with representations of subject literatures is discussed. It is shown how different approaches or paradigms in the represented literature imply different information needs and relevance criteria (which users typically cannot express very well, which is why IS cannot primarily rely on user studies). These principles are exemplified by comparing behaviorism, cognitivism, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience as approaches in psychology. The relevance criteria implicit in each position are outlined, and empirical data are provided to prove the theoretical claims. It is further shown that the most general level of relevance criteria is implied by epistemological theories. The article concludes that the fundamental problems of IS and IR are based in epistemology, which therefore becomes the most important allied field for IS.

THEORY AND METATHEORY OF INFORMATION SCIENCE: A NEW INTERPRETATION

This paper analyses the theoretical and the epistemological assumptions of information science (IS). Different views of knowledge underlie all major issues in IS. Epistemological theories have a fundamental impact on theories about users, their cognition and information seeking behaviour, on subject analysis, and on classification. They have also fundamental impact on information retrieval, on the understanding of “information”, on the view of documents and their role in communication, on information selection, on theories about the functions of information systems and on the role of information professionals. IS must be based on epistemological knowledge, which avoids blind alleys and is not outdated. The paper shows limitations in the dominant approaches to IS and proposes alternative viewpoints.

Library and information science: practice, theory, and philosophical basis

Abstract This paper presents different facets or aspects of Library and Information Science (LIS) from a theoretical and philosophical perspective. It begins with the presentation of different attitudes towards LIS and the divergence between LIS as a knowledge producing and knowledge utilizing area. It goes on to discuss the different labels for the discipline, its institutional affiliations and some technology driven paradigms. Fields of LIS practices, examples of concrete research problems and the fundamental concepts are introduced as are subareas, theories, related disciplines, and approaches (“paradigms”/metatheories). Also a short presentation of research methods and basic philosophical assumptions is included.

Empiricism, rationalism and positivism in library and information science

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the importance and influence of the epistemologies: “empiricism”, “rationalism” and “positivism” in library and information science (LIS).Design/methodology/approach – First, outlines the historical development of these epistemologies, by discussing and identifying basic characteristics in them and by introducing the criticism that has been raised against these views. Second, their importance for and influence in LIS have been examined.Findings – The findings of this paper are that it is not a trivial matter to define those epistemologies and to characterise their influence. Many different interpretations exist and there is no consensus regarding current influence of positivism in LIS. Arguments are put forward that empiricism and positivism are still dominant within LIS and specific examples of the influence on positivism in LIS are provided. A specific analysis is made of the empiricist view of information seeking and it is shown that empiricism may be r...

Concept theory

It cannot be overemphasized that changes in concepts have far more impact than new discoveries

Towards a theory of aboutness, subject, topicality, theme, domain, field, content …and relevance

Theories of aboutness and theories of subject analysis and of related concepts such as topicality are often isolated from each other in the literature of information science (IS) and related disciplines. In IS it is important to consider the nature and meaning of these concepts, which is closely related to theoretical and metatheoretical issues in information retrieval (IR). A theory of IR must specify which concepts should be regarded as synonymous concepts and explain how the meaning of the nonsynonymous concepts should be defined.

DOCUMENTS, MEMORY INSTITUTIONS AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

This paper investigates the problem of the labelling of the library, documentation and information field with particular emphasis on the terms ‘information’ and ‘document’. What influences introduced the concept of ‘information’ into the library field in the middle of the twentieth century? What kind of theoretical orientations have dominated the field, and how are these orientations linked to epistemological assumptions? What is the implication of the recent influence of socially oriented epistemologies for such basic concepts in IS as ‘information’ and ‘document’? The article explores these problems and advocates an approach with emphasis on documents and on the concept ‘memory institutions’ as generic terms for the central object of study.

O conceito de informação

O conceito de informacao como usado na linguagem cotidiana, no sentido de conhecimento comunicado, tem um importante papel na sociedade contemporânea. Este conceito ganhou relevância principalmente a partir do final da Segunda Guerra Mundial com a disseminacao global do uso das redes de computadores. O nascimento da ciencia da informacao (CI), em meados dos anos cinquenta, testemunha este fato. Para uma ciencia, assim como para a CI, e sem duvida, importante como seus termos fundamentais sao definidos, e em CI, como em outros campos, geralmente e colocado o problema sobre como definir informacao. Esta revisao e uma tentativa de tracar um panorama sobre a situacao presente do conceito de informacao em CI na perspectiva tambem de suas relacoes interdisciplinares.