History of information science

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to review the historical writings about the development of information science or certain aspects of it rather than to review historic events and figures in the development of IS. The chapter is based on the author's perception of the principal interest of the memebership of the American Society for Information Science (ASIS) since its foundation in 1937 as the American Documentation Institute. In this view, IS is centered on the representaiton, storage, transmission, selection (retrieval, filtering) and the use of documents and messages,where documents and messages are created for use by humans. Interest extends outwards in many directions because of the need to understand contextual, institutional, methodological, technological, and theoretical aspects.