Library and information science (LIS)
[Library and Information Sciences is the name used in the Dewey Decimal Classification for class 20 from the 18th edition (1971) to the 22nd edition (2003).] are two interconnected disciplines that deal with information management. This includes organization, access, collection, and regulation of information, both in physical and digital forms.
[Coleman, A. (2002)]
Interdisciplinarity: The Road Ahead for Education in Digital Libraries
D-Lib Magazine, 8:8/9 (July/August).
Library science and
information science are two original disciplines; however, they are within the same field of study. Library science is applied information science. Library science is both an application and a subfield of information science. Due to the strong connection, sometimes the two terms are used synonymously.
Definition
Library science (previously termed library studies and library economy) is an
interdisciplinary
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several fields such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, economi ...
or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of
management
Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...
,
information technology
Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
,
education
Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...
, and other areas to
libraries
A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...
; the collection, organization,
preservation
Preservation may refer to:
Heritage and conservation
* Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible
* ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ...
, and
dissemination of information resources; and the
political economy
Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...
of information. Martin
Schrettinger, a Bavarian
librarian
A librarian is a person who professionally works managing information. Librarians' common activities include providing access to information, conducting research, creating and managing information systems, creating, leading, and evaluating educat ...
, coined the discipline within his work (1808–1828) ''Versuch eines vollständigen Lehrbuchs der Bibliothek-Wissenschaft oder Anleitung zur vollkommenen Geschäftsführung eines Bibliothekars''. Rather than classifying information based on nature-oriented elements, as was previously done in his Bavarian library, Schrettinger organized books in alphabetical order. The first American school for library science was founded by
Melvil Dewey at
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
in 1887.
Historically, library science has also included
archival science
Archival science, or archival studies, is the study and theory of building and Curator, curating archives, which are collections of documents, Sound recording and reproduction, recordings, photographs and various other materials in physical or di ...
. This includes: how information resources are organized to serve the needs of selected user groups; how people interact with classification systems and technology; how information is acquired, evaluated and applied by people in and outside libraries as well as cross-culturally; how people are trained and educated for careers in libraries; the
ethics
Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
that guide library service and organization; the legal status of
libraries
A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...
and information resources; and the applied science of computer technology used in documentation and
records management
Records management, also known as records and information management, is an organizational function devoted to the information management, management of information in an organization throughout its records life-cycle, life cycle, from the time of ...
.
LIS should not be confused with
information theory
Information theory is the mathematical study of the quantification (science), quantification, Data storage, storage, and telecommunications, communication of information. The field was established and formalized by Claude Shannon in the 1940s, ...
, the mathematical study of the concept of information. ''Library philosophy'' has been contrasted with ''library science'' as the study of the aims and justifications of librarianship as opposed to the development and refinement of techniques.
Education and training
Academic courses in library science include
collection management, information systems and technology, research methods, user studies,
information literacy,
cataloging
In library and information science, cataloging (American English, US) or cataloguing (British English, UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging ...
and
classification
Classification is the activity of assigning objects to some pre-existing classes or categories. This is distinct from the task of establishing the classes themselves (for example through cluster analysis). Examples include diagnostic tests, identif ...
,
preservation
Preservation may refer to:
Heritage and conservation
* Preservation (library and archival science), activities aimed at prolonging the life of a record while making as few changes as possible
* ''Preservation'' (magazine), published by the Nat ...
,
reference
A reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''nam ...
,
statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a s ...
and
management
Management (or managing) is the administration of organizations, whether businesses, nonprofit organizations, or a Government agency, government bodies through business administration, Nonprofit studies, nonprofit management, or the political s ...
. Library science is constantly evolving, incorporating new topics like
database management,
information architecture and
information management
Information management (IM) is the appropriate and optimized capture, storage, retrieval, and use of information. It may be personal information management or organizational. Information management for organizations concerns a cycle of organiz ...
, among others.
With the mounting acceptance of Wikipedia as a valued and reliable reference source, many libraries, museums, and archives have introduced the role of
Wikipedian in residence. As a result, some universities are including coursework relating to Wikipedia and Knowledge Management in their MLIS programs.
Becoming a library staff member does not always need a degree, and in some contexts the difference between being a library staff member and a librarian is the level of education. Most professional library jobs require a professional degree in library science or equivalent. In the United States and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
the certification usually comes from a master's degree granted by an
ALA-accredited institution. In Australia, a number of institutions offer degrees accepted by the
ALIA (Australian Library and Information Association). Global standards of accreditation or certification in librarianship have yet to be developed.
United States and Canada
The Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) is the master's degree that is required for most professional librarian positions in the United States and Canada. The MLIS was created after the older Master of Library Science (MLS) was reformed to reflect the information science and technology needs of the field. According to the American Library Association (ALA), "ALA-accredited degrees have
advarious names such as Master of Arts, Master of Librarianship, Master of Library and Information Studies, or Master of Science. The degree name is determined by the program. The
LACommittee for Accreditation evaluates programs based on their adherence to the Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies, not based on the name of the degree."
Types of librarianship
Public
The study of librarianship for
public libraries covers issues such as cataloging;
collection development for a diverse community;
information literacy;
readers' advisory; community standards; public services-focused librarianship via community-centered programming; serving a diverse community of adults, children, and teens;
intellectual freedom;
censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...
; and legal and budgeting issues. The public library as a commons or public sphere based on the work of
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas ( , ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt S ...
has become a central metaphor in the 21st century.
In the United States there are four different types of public libraries:
association libraries, municipal public libraries, school district libraries, and special district public libraries. Each receives funding through different sources, each is established by a different set of voters, and not all are subject to municipal civil service governance.
School
The study of
school librarianship covers library services for children in Nursery, primary through secondary school. In some regions, the local government may have stricter standards for the education and certification of
school librarians (who are sometimes considered a special case of teacher), than for other librarians, and the educational program will include those local criteria. School librarianship may also include issues of
intellectual freedom,
pedagogy
Pedagogy (), most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken ...
,
information literacy, and how to build a cooperative
curriculum
In education, a curriculum (; : curriculums or curricula ) is the totality of student experiences that occur in an educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experi ...
with the teaching staff.
Academic
The study of
academic librarianship covers library services for colleges and universities. Issues of special importance to the field may include
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...
; technology;
digital libraries and digital repositories;
academic freedom
Academic freedom is the right of a teacher to instruct and the right of a student to learn in an academic setting unhampered by outside interference. It may also include the right of academics to engage in social and political criticism.
Academic ...
;
open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
to scholarly works; and specialized knowledge of subject areas important to the institution and the relevant
reference work
A reference work is a document, such as a Academic publishing#Scholarly paper, paper, book or periodical literature, periodical (or their electronic publishing, electronic equivalents), to which one can refer for information. The information ...
s. Librarians often divide focus individually as liaisons on particular schools within a college or university. Academic librarians may be
subject specific librarians.
Some academic librarians are considered
faculty, and hold similar academic ranks to those of professors, while others are not. In either case, the minimal qualification is a Master of Arts in Library Studies or a Master of Arts in Library Science. Some academic libraries may only require a master's degree in a specific academic field or a related field, such as educational technology.
Archival
The study of archives includes the training of
archivists, librarians specially trained to maintain and build
archive
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located.
Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organ ...
s of
records intended for
historical preservation. Special issues include physical preservation, conservation, and restoration of materials and
mass deacidification; specialist catalogs; solo work; access; and appraisal. Many archivists are also trained historians specializing in the period covered by the archive. There have been attempts to revive the concept of
documentation
Documentation is any communicable material that is used to describe, explain or instruct regarding some attributes of an object, system or procedure, such as its parts, assembly, installation, maintenance, and use. As a form of knowledge managem ...
and to speak of
Library, information and documentation studies (or science).
The archival mission includes three major goals: To identify papers and records with enduring value, preserve the identified papers, and make the papers available to others.
While libraries receive items individually, archival items will usually become part of the archive's collection as a cohesive group.
Major difference in collections is that library collections typically comprise published items (books, magazines, etc.), while archival collections are usually unpublished works (letters, diaries, etc.). Library collections are created by many individuals, as each author and illustrator create their own publication; in contrast, an archive usually collects the records of one person, family, institution, or organization, so the archival items will have fewer sources of authors.
Behavior in an archive differs from behavior in other libraries. In most libraries, items are openly available to the public. Archival items almost never circulate, and someone interested in viewing documents must request them of the archivist and may only be able view them in a closed reading room.
Special
Special libraries are libraries established to meet the highly specialized requirements of professional or business groups. A library is special depending on whether it covers a specialized collection, a special subject, or a particular group of users, or even the type of parent organization, such as
medical libraries
A health or medical library is designed to assist physicians, health professionals, students, patients, consumers, medical researchers, and Informationist, information specialists in finding health and scientific information to improve, update, as ...
or
law libraries.
The issues at these libraries are specific to their industries but may include solo work, corporate financing, specialized collection development, and extensive self-promotion to potential patrons. Special librarians have their own professional organization, the
Special Libraries Association (SLA).
Some special libraries, such as the
CIA Library, may contain classified works. It is a resource to employees of the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
, containing over 125,000 written materials, subscribes to around 1,700 periodicals, and had collections in three areas: Historical Intelligence, Circulating, and Reference. In February 1997, three librarians working at the institution spoke to ''
Information Outlook'', a publication of the SLA, revealing that the library had been created in 1947, the importance of the library in disseminating information to employees, even with a small staff, and how the library organizes its materials.
Preservation
Preservation librarians most often work in academic libraries. Their focus is on the management of preservation activities that seek to maintain access to content within books, manuscripts, archival materials, and other library resources. Examples of activities managed by preservation librarians include binding, conservation, digital and analog reformatting,
digital preservation
In library science, library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal process to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable in the long term. It involves planning, resource allocation, and appli ...
, and environmental monitoring.
History
Libraries have existed for many centuries but library science is a more recent phenomenon, as early libraries were managed primarily by academics.
17th and 18th century

The earliest text on "library operations", ''Advice on Establishing a Library'' was published in 1627 by French librarian and scholar
Gabriel Naudé. Naudé wrote on many subjects including politics, religion, history, and the supernatural. He put into practice all the ideas put forth in ''Advice'' when given the opportunity to build and maintain the library of
Cardinal Jules Mazarin.
During the
'golden age of libraries' in the 17th century, publishers and sellers seeking to take advantage of the burgeoning book trade developed descriptive catalogs of their wares for distribution – a practice was adopted and further extrapolated by many libraries of the time to cover areas like philosophy, sciences, linguistics, and medicine
In 1726
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to ...
wrote ''Idea of Arranging a Narrower Library.''
19th century
Martin Schrettinger wrote the second textbook (the first in Germany) on the subject from 1808 to 1829.
Some of the main tools used by LIS to provide access to the resources originated in 19th century to make information accessible by recording, identifying, and providing bibliographic control of printed knowledge.
The origin for some of these tools were even earlier.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...
, whose library at
Monticello consisted of thousands of books, devised a classification system inspired by the
Baconian method, which grouped books more or less by subject rather than alphabetically, as it was previously done. The Jefferson collection provided the start of what became the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
.
The first American school of librarianship opened in New York under the leadership of
Melvil Dewey, noted for his
1876 decimal classification, on January 5, 1887, as the
Columbia College School of Library Economy. The term ''library economy'' was common in the U.S. until 1942, with the term, ''library science,'' predominant through much of the 20th century.
20th century
In the English-speaking world the term "library science" seems to have been used for the first time in India in the 1916 book ''Punjab Library Primer'', written by Asa Don Dickinson and published by the
University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. This university was the first in Asia to begin teaching "library science". The ''Punjab Library Primer'' was the first textbook on library science published in English anywhere in the world. The first textbook in the United States was the ''Manual of Library Economy'' by
James Duff Brown, published in 1903.
Later, the term was used in the title of
S. R. Ranganathan's ''The Five Laws of Library Science'', published in 1931, which contains Ranganathan's
titular theory. Ranganathan is also credited with the development of the first major analytical-synthetic classification system, the
colon classification.
In the United States, Lee Pierce Butler published his 1933 book ''An Introduction to Library Science'' (University of Chicago Press), where he advocated for research using
quantitative methods and ideas in the
social sciences
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of society, societies and the Social relation, relationships among members within those societies. The term was former ...
with the aim of using librarianship to address society's information needs. He was one of the first faculty at the
University of Chicago Graduate Library School, which changed the structure and focus of education for librarianship in the twentieth century. This research agenda went against the more procedure-based approach of the "library economy", which was mostly confined to practical problems in the administration of libraries.
In 1923,
Charles C. Williamson, who was appointed by the Carnegie Corporation, published an assessment of library science education entitled "The Williamson Report", which designated that universities should provide library science training.
This report had a significant impact on library science training and education. Library research and practical work, in the area of information science, have remained largely distinct both in training and in research interests.
William Stetson Merrill's ''A Code for Classifiers'', released in several editions from 1914 to 1939, is an example of a more pragmatic approach, where arguments stemming from in-depth knowledge about each field of study are employed to recommend a system of classification. While Ranganathan's approach was philosophical, it was also tied more to the day-to-day business of running a library. A reworking of Ranganathan's laws was published in 1995 which removes the constant references to books.
Michael Gorman's ''Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century'' features the eight principles necessary by library professionals and incorporates knowledge and information in all their forms, allowing for digital information to be considered.
From library science to LIS
By the late 1960s, mainly due to the meteoric rise of human computing power and the new academic disciplines formed therefrom, academic institutions began to add the term "information science" to their names. The first school to do this was at the
University of Pittsburgh
The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
in 1964. More schools followed during the 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s almost all library schools in the US had added information science to their names. Although there are exceptions, similar developments have taken place in other parts of the world. In
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
, the Department of Library Science,
University of Madras
The University of Madras is a public university, public State university (India), state university in Chennai (Madras), Tamil Nadu, India. Established in 1857, it is one of the oldest and most prominent universities in India, incorporated by an ...
(southern state of
TamiilNadu, India) became the Department of Library and Information Science in 1976. In
Denmark
Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...
, for example, the "Royal School of Librarianship" changed its English name to
The Royal School of Library and Information Science in 1997.
21st century
The
digital age
The Information Age is a History by period, historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during the Industrial Revolution, to an economy centered on info ...
has transformed how information is accessed and
retrieved. "The library is now a part of a complex and dynamic educational, recreational, and informational infrastructure."
Mobile device
A mobile device or handheld device is a computer small enough to hold and operate in hand. Mobile devices are typically battery-powered and possess a flat-panel display and one or more built-in input devices, such as a touchscreen or keypad. ...
s and applications with
wireless networking
A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking allows homes, telecommunications networks, and business installations to avoid the costly process of introducing cables in ...
, high-speed computers and networks, and the
computing cloud have deeply impacted and developed information science and information services. The evolution of the library sciences maintains its mission of access equity and community space, as well as the new means for information retrieval called information literacy skills. All catalogs,
databases
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and ana ...
, and a growing number of books are available on the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
. In addition, the expanding free access to
open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
journals and sources such as
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...
has fundamentally impacted how information is accessed.
Information literacy is the ability to "determine the extent of information needed, access the needed information effectively and efficiently, evaluate information and its sources critically, incorporate selected information into one's knowledge base, use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose, and understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally." the concept of
data literacy has emerged within library and information science as a complement to information literacy to refer to the ability to find, interpret, evaluate, manage, and ethically use data to support research, learning, and informed decision-making.
In the early 2000s, dLIST, Digital Library for Information Sciences and Technology was established. It was the first
open access
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...
archive for the multidisciplinary 'library and information sciences' building a global scholarly communication consortium and the LIS Commons in order to increase the visibility of research literature, bridge the divide between practice, teaching, and research communities, and improve visibility, uncitedness, and integrate scholarly work in the critical information infrastructures of archives, libraries, and museums.
Social justice, an important ethical value in librarianship and in the 21st century has become an important research area, if not subdiscipline of LIS.
Journals
Some core journals in LIS are:
* ''
Annual Review of Information Science and Technology'' (ARIST) (1966–2011)
* ' (EPI) (1992–) (Formerly Information World en Español)
* ''
Information Processing and Management''
* ''
Information Research: An International Electronic Journal'' (IR) (1995–)
* ''
Italian Journal of Library and Information Studies'' (JLIS.it)
* ''
Journal of Documentation'' (JDoc) (1945–)
* ''
Journal of Information Science'' (JIS) (1979–)
* ''
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology'' (formerly ''
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology'') (JASIST) (1950–)
* ''
Knowledge Organization''
* ''Library Literature and Information Science Retrospective''
* ''
Library Trends'' (1952–)
* ''
Scientometrics (journal)'' (1978–)
* ''
The Library Quarterly'' (LQ) (1931–)
* ''
Grandhalaya Sarvaswam'' (1915–)
Important bibliographical databases in LIS are, among others,
Social Sciences Citation Index
The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) is a commercial citation index product of Clarivate Analytics. It was originally developed by the Institute for Scientific Information from the Science Citation Index. The Social Sciences Citation Index is ...
and
Library and Information Science Abstracts
The Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) is an international abstracting and indexing tool designed for library professionals and other information specialists. LISA covers the literature in Library and information science (LIS) since ...
Conferences
This is a list of some of the major conferences in the field.
* Annual meetings of the
American Library Association
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world.
History 19th century ...
.
* Annual meeting of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, ...
* Annual meeting of the
Association for Library and Information Science Education
*
Conceptions of Library and Information Science
*
i-Schools' iConferences
* The
(IFLA): World Library and Information Congress
*
African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) Conference
Subfields
Information science grew out of
documentation science
Documentation science is the study of the wikt:recording, recording and Information retrieval, retrieval of information. It includes methods for storing, retrieving, and sharing of information captured on physical as well as digital documents. T ...
and therefore has a tradition for considering scientific and scholarly communication,
bibliographic database
A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records. This is an organised online collection of references to published written works like academic journal, journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government an ...
s, subject knowledge and terminology etc.
An advertisement for a full Professor in information science at the Royal School of Library and Information Science, spring 2011, provides one view of which sub-disciplines are well-established: "The research and teaching/supervision must be within some (and at least one) of these well-established information science areas
A curriculum study by Kajberg & Lørring in 2005 reported a "degree of overlap of the ten curricular themes with subject areas in the current curricula of responding LIS schools".
*
Information seeking
Information seeking is the process or activity of attempting to obtain information in both human and technological contexts. Information seeking is related to, but different from, information retrieval (IR).
Compared to information retrieval
T ...
and
Information retrieval
Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the task of identifying and retrieving information system resources that are relevant to an Information needs, information need. The information need can be specified in the form ...
100%
*
Library management
Library management is a sub-discipline of management, institutional management that focuses on specific issues faced by libraries and library management professionals. Library management encompasses normal managerial tasks, as well as intellectu ...
and promotion 96%
*
Knowledge management
Knowledge management (KM) is the set of procedures for producing, disseminating, utilizing, and overseeing an organization's knowledge and data. It alludes to a multidisciplinary strategy that maximizes knowledge utilization to accomplish organ ...
86%
*
Knowledge organization 82%
*
Information literacy and learning 76%
* Library and society in a historical perspective (
Library history) 66%
* The
Information society: Barriers to the
free access to information 64%
*
Cultural heritage
Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by socie ...
and digitisation of the cultural heritage (
Digital preservation
In library science, library and archival science, digital preservation is a formal process to ensure that digital information of continuing value remains accessible and usable in the long term. It involves planning, resource allocation, and appli ...
) 62%
* The library in the multi-cultural information society: International and intercultural communication 42%
* Mediation of culture in a special European context 26% "
There is often an overlap between these subfields of LIS and other fields of study. Most information retrieval research, for example, belongs to computer science. Knowledge management is considered a subfield of management or organizational studies.
Metadata
Pre-Internet classification systems and
cataloging
In library and information science, cataloging (American English, US) or cataloguing (British English, UK) is the process of creating metadata representing information resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging ...
systems were mainly concerned with two objectives:
# To provide rich bibliographic descriptions and relations between information objects, and
# To facilitate sharing of this bibliographic information across library boundaries.
The development of the Internet and the information explosion that followed found many communities needing mechanisms for the description, authentication and management of their information.
These communities developed taxonomies and
controlled vocabularies to describe their knowledge, as well as unique information architectures to communicate these classifications and libraries found themselves as liaison or translator between these metadata systems.
The concerns of cataloging in the Internet era have gone beyond simple bibliographic descriptions and the need for descriptive information about the ownership and copyright of a digital product – a publishing concern – and description for the different formats and accessibility features of a resource – a sociological concern – show the continued development and cross discipline necessity of resource description.
In the 21st century, the usage of
open data
Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license.
The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...
,
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
and
open protocols like
OAI-PMH has allowed thousands of libraries and institutions to collaborate on the production of global metadata services previously offered only by increasingly expensive commercial proprietary products. Tools like
BASE and
Unpaywall automate the search of an
academic paper
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes Research, academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or Thesis, theses. The part of academic written output that is n ...
across thousands of repositories by libraries and research institutions.
Knowledge organization
Library science is very closely related to issues of knowledge organization; however, the latter is a broader term that covers how knowledge is represented and stored (computer science/linguistics), how it might be automatically processed (artificial intelligence), and how it is organized outside the library in global systems such as the internet. In addition, library science typically refers to a specific community engaged in managing holdings as they are found in university and government libraries, while knowledge organization, in general, refers to this and also to other communities (such as publishers) and other systems (such as the Internet). The library system is thus one socio-technical structure for knowledge organization.
The terms 'information organization' and 'knowledge organization' are often used synonymously.
The fundamentals of their study - particularly theory relating to indexing and classification - and many of the main tools used by the disciplines in modern times to provide access to digital resources such as abstracting, metadata, resource description, systematic and alphabetic subject description, and terminology, originated in the 19th century and were developed, in part, to assist in making humanity's intellectual output accessible by recording, identifying, and providing bibliographic control of printed knowledge.
Information has been published that analyses the relations between the philosophy of information (PI), library and information science (LIS), and social epistemology (SE).
Ethics
Practicing library professionals and members of the
American Library Association
The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world.
History 19th century ...
recognize and abide by the ALA Code of Ethics. According to the American Library Association, "In a political system grounded in an informed citizenry, we are members of a profession explicitly committed to intellectual freedom and freedom of access to information. We have a special obligation to ensure the free flow of information and ideas to present and future generations."
The ALA Code of Ethics was adopted in the winter of 1939, and updated on June 29, 2021.
See also
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Notes
References
Further reading
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Foundational Books in Library Services.1976-2024.''LHRT News & Notes.'' October, 2024.
International Journal of Library Science()
* Lafontaine, Gerard S. (1958). ''Dictionary of Terms Used in the Paper, Printing, and Allied Industries''. Toronto: H. Smith Paper Mills. 110 p.
* ''The Oxford Guide to Library Research'' (2005) –
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* Thompson, Elizabeth H. (1943). ''A.L.A. Glossary of Library Terms, with a Selection of Terms in Related Fields'', prepared under the direction of the Committee on Library Terminology of the American Library Association. Chicago, Ill.: American Library Association. viii, 189 p.
* V-LIB 1.2 (2008 Vartavan Library Classification, over 700 fields of sciences & arts classified according to a relational philosophy, currently sold under license in the UK by Rosecastle Ltd. (se
External links
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LISNews.org– librarian and information science news
LISWire.com– librarian and information science wire
{{Authority control
hu:Könyvtár- és információtudomány
sv:Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap