Software

Software

Computer software is a generic term for computer programs. A program is a series of instructions used to manipulate data or to control the workings of a computer system. Programs which operate the computer itself are termed systems software, while programs which control the particular task at hand are termed applications software.

Examples of applications software include word processors, calculating programs, communications software and reference managers.

Software may be standardized or made for a specific system or task. Concerning standardized software are copyright issues important. A distinction is made between protected programs and public domain programs. A third category is shareware, which is free to disseminate and try, but not to use continuously without charge.

For computer science is software a basic term (See Wikipedia, 2005).

For Library and Information Science (LIS) is software a kind of documents, which may be acquired, described, organized and mediated. Of special interest are possibilities for reuse, including description and indexing of programs for reuse. (see, for example, Albrechtsen (1990, 1992), Stierna & Rowe (2003)and Gonzalez & van der Meer (2004)).

Utilization and reuse of software is very dependent of portability and programming language. So-called "object-oriented" programming languages are particular well suited for reuse.

Another interest of LIS is, of course, software as a tool for managing information and doing research. (cf., Newby, 2001).

Literature:

Albrechtsen, H. (1990). Software Concepts: Knowledge Organization and the Human Interface. Advances in Knowledge Organization, ed. by R. Fugmann. Frankfurt: Indeks Verlag, 48-64.

Albrechtsen, H. (1992). PRESS: A Thesaurus-based Information System for Software Reuse. Classification Research for Knowledge Representation and Organization. Ed. by N. J. Williamson and M. Hudon. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers, 137-144.

Bretthauer, D. (2002). Open source software: A history. Information Technology and Libraries, 21(1), 3-10.

Frakes, W. B. & Gandel, P. B. (1990). Representing Resuable Software. Information and Software Technology, 32(10), 653-664.

Gonzalez, R. & van der Meer, K. (2004). Standard metadata applied to software retrieval. Journal of Information Science, 30(4), 300-309.

Morgan, E. L. (2002). Possibilities for open source software in libraries. Information Technology and Libraries, 21(1), 12-15.

Newby, G. (2001). IR software for large-scale research. ASIST 2001: Proceedings of the 64TH ASIST Annual Meeting, 38, 656-656.

Newby, G. B.; Greenberg, J. & Jones, P. (2003). Open source software development and Lotka's Law: Bibliometric patterns in programming. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(2), 169-178.

Stierna, E. J. & Rowe, N. C. (2003). Applying information-retrieval methods to software reuse: a case study. Information Processing & Management, 39(1), 67-74.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2005). Computer software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software