Information scientists

Information scientist

An information scientist is a person belonging to a profession consisting of researchers in Information Science. It is an interdisciplinary field consisting of cognitive scientists, computer scientists, library scientists, linguistis, philosophers and sociologists etc.

An information scientist is a person doing research in the field, while an information specialist do practical information work such as database searching, indexing, bibliometrical surveys etc.

Vickery & Vickery (1987, pp. 361-369) mentions that Institute of Information Scientists was established in 1958 and he lists the criteria put forward by this institute "Criteria for Information Science" (appendix 1) as well as his own "Areas of study in information science" (appendix 2).

Brittain (1991) describes the role of the information scientist, which includes skills of librarianship, knowledge about information needs, bibliometrics and much else.

Hjørland (2002) defined the special competency of information specialists is related to the concept domain analysis. Information science grew out of special librarianship and documentation and implicit in its tradition has been a focus on subject knowledge. Eleven specific approaches to domain analysis define together the specific competencies of information specialists:

(1) Producing and evaluating literature guides and subject gateways,

(2) Producing and evaluating special classifications and thesauri,

(3) Research on and competencies in indexing and retrieving information in specialities,

(4) Knowledge about empirical user studies in subject areas,

(5) Producing and interpreting bibliometrical studies,

(6) Historical studies of information structures and services in domains,

(7) Studies of documents and genres in knowledge domains,

(8) Epistemological and critical studies of different paradigms, assumptions and interests

in domains.

(9) Knowledge about terminological studies, LSP (languages for special purposes)

and discourse analysis in knowledge fields,

(10) Knowledge about and studies of structures and institutions in scientific

and professional communication in a domain.

(11) Knowledge about methods and results from domain analytic studies about

professional cognition, knowledge representation in computer science and artificial intelligence.

By bringing these approaches together Hjørland advocates a view which may have been implicit in previous literature but which has not before been set out systematically. The approaches presented are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive.

It is claimed that the information specialist who has worked with these 11 approaches in a given domain (eg., music, sociology or chemistry) has a special expertise that should not be mixed up with the kind of expertise taught at universities in corresponding subjects. Some of these 11 approaches are today well-known in schools of LIS. Bibliometrics is an example. Other approaches are new and represent a view of what should be introduced in the training of information professionals.

First and foremost should these 11 approaches be seen as supplementary: That the professional identity is best maintained if those methods are applied to the same examples (same domain). Somebody would perhaps feel that this would make the education of information professionals too narrow. The counter-argument is that you can only understand and use these methods properly in a new domain, if you already have a deep knowledge of the specific information problems in at least one domain. It is a dangerous illusion to believe that one becomes more competent to work in any field if one does not know anything about any domain.

The special challenge in our science is to provide general background for use in specific fields. This is what domain analysis is developed for. Study programs that allow the students to specialize and to work independent in the selected field (such as, for example, the curriculum at the Royal School of LIS in Denmark) should fit well with the intentions in domain analysis.

In this connection it should be emphasized that the 11 approaches are presented as general approaches that may be used about almost any domain whatsoever. They should, however, bee seen in connection. If this is not the case, then their relative strengths and weaknesses cannot be evaluated. The approaches do not have the same status. Some (e.g. empirical user studies) are dependent on other (e.g. epistemological studies).

The paper is an argument about what should be core teachings in our field. It should be both broad enough to cover the important parts of IS and specific enough to maintain a special focus and identity compared to, for example computer science and the cognitive sciences. It is not a narrow view of information science and on the other hand it does not set forth an unrealistic utopia.

Literature:

Brittain, J. M. (1991). in: Knowledge and Communication: Essays on the Information Chain. Ed. by A. J. Meadows. London: Clive Bingley.

Hjørland, B. (2002). The special competency of information specialists. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53(14), 1275-1276.

Vickery, B. & Vickery, A. (1987). Information Science in theory and practice. London: Bowker-Saur.