Journal Entry 2

Reading assignments

Chapter 1

Rubin writes of the traditional way that information use to be produced: creator (author, artist), distributor (publisher, vendor) and disseminator (library, museums). The internet has turned this system on its head. Authors, artists can now publish or release directly to the internet thus circumventing the distributor and also the disseminators. However, with the volume of data on the World Wide Web (WWW), without formal distribution through publishers the difficulty of locating these materials increases.

Rubin examines the “information infrastructure in the United States.” Although broadcast television viewing is down, overall television consumption is up due to satellite and cable networks. Internet consumption has also increased whereas print materials (newspaper, book and magazines) use has declined. What I found most interesting is the persistence of the “digital divide.” The amount of internet use correlates to the amount of income. Furthermore, use also appears to be ethnicity divided with Caucasians and Asian Americans using the internet far more than either African Americans or Hispanics. These who do not use the internet tend to be “low income with low levels of formal education and who are either African American or Hispanic.”

In this age of television, radio, video and the internet, consumers of information “are developing new expectations in the digital environment” (Rubin, 2004). With these raised expectations is desire to be self-sufficient and the “seamless” integration of the various technologies.

Rubin, R. (2004). Foundations of library and information science. New York:
Neal-Schuman Publishers, Inc.

JASIS trilogy assignment

“Information science is the study of the gathering, organizing, storing, retrieving, and dissemination of information” (Bates, 1999). Information does not deal with the content of the material, but with gathering cataloguing and retrieval of the materials. The domain of information science is all the recorded information that is selected and retained. This science is about structure of systems and organization of the data not the actual content of the material.
“Researching information- whether you are indexing of formulating a search strategy or helping someone articulate what they find – is different from knowing the information” (Bates, 1999). In other words, librarians or information scientists do not need to have great knowledge on all matters. They just need to know how to distill the question to its true essence and from there the most efficient way to retrieve the information sought.

Bates, M. (1999). The invisible substrate of information science. Journal of American society for information science. 50(12), 1043-1050.

This essay addresses problems that the author believes exist in information science. Saracevic states that “information science has three characteristics” that are the dominant themes “of its evolution and existence” (Saracevic, 1999). These characteristics included the interdisciplinary nature of information science, its connection to technology and the “strong social and human dimension.” The structure of information science falls into two main camps: the domain or basic research and the applied or user studies. He goes on to write the close kinship between librarianship and computer science to information science. Saracevic expresses concern almost disappointment that more hasn’t been done to forge these two camps. Furthermore, he sees a continuing disconnect of information science from the human user.

Saracevic, T. (1999). Information Science. Journal of the American society of information science, 50(12), 1051-1063.

This article provides a historical perspective on the development of the information science field. The author writes of how the field developed “out of practical application, especially industrial ones” (Windsor, 1999). Initially, pharmaceutical companies would have libraries and librarians in-house. It was discovered that librarians without the industrial background were not able to satisfactorily perform their job. Eventually, scientist would train as librarians and thus become “information scientists.” The author goes on the write that as formal degrees were conferred by universities in the information sciences the nature of JASIS changed. The articles began to have a more theoretical and a less applied slant. He believes that a portion of JASIS must remain available to lay reader.
Windsor, D. A. (1999). Industrial Roots of Information Science. Journal of American society for information science, 50(12), 1064-1065.

Final Thought

I find it odd that in the evolution of information science that librarians were found wanting as they did not have a science background. In the Bates article above, the librarian or information scientist does not need to understand the content of the article, book, or other material. The information professional just needs to understand what information is being sought and how to retrieve it. The disconnection found in these two articles is perhaps what Saracevic is really lamenting.