What kind of science can information science be?

Abstract

During the 20th century there was a strong desire to develop an information science from librarianship, bibliography, and documentation and in 1968 the American Documentation Institute changed its name to the American Society for Information Science. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, departments of (library and) information science had turned instead towards the social sciences. These programs address a variety of important topics, but they have been less successful in providing a coherent explanation of the nature and scope of the field. Progress can be made towards a coherent, unified view of the roles of archives, libraries, museums, online information services, and related organizations if they are treated as information-providing services. However, such an approach seems significantly incomplete on ordinary understandings of the providing of information. Instead of asking what information science is or what we might wish it to become, we ask instead what kind of field it can be given our assumptions about it. We approach the question by examining some keywords: science, information, knowledge, and interdisciplinary. We conclude that if information science is concerned with what people know, then it is a form of cultural engagement, and at most, a science of the artificial.

Full text

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Accepted for publication in the Journal of Information Science and Technology. Published version may
differ slightly.

What Kind of Science Can Information Science Be?

Michael Buckland
School of Information
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-4600

ABSTRACT
During the twentieth century there was a strong desire to develop an Information Science from
librarianship, bibliography, and documentation and in 1968 the American Documentation Institute
changed its name to American Society for Information Science. By the beginning of the twenty-first
century, however, departments of (library and) information science had turned instead towards the social
sciences. These programs address a variety of important topics, but they have been less successful in
providing a coherent explanation of the nature and scope of the field. Progress can be made towards a
coherent, unified view of the roles of archives, libraries, museums, online information services, and
related organizations if they are treated as information-providing services. But such an approach seems
significantly incomplete on ordinary understandings of the providing of information. Instead of asking
what Information Science is or what we might wish it to become, we ask instead what kind of field it can
be given our assumptions about it. We approach the question by examining some key words: science,
information, knowledge and interdisciplinary. We conclude that if information science is concerned with
what people know, then it is a form of cultural engagement and, at most, a science of the artificial.


INTRODUCTION
During the twentieth century there was a strong desire for the provision of information services to
become scientific, to move from librarianship, bibliography, and documentation to an Information
Science. Accordingly, in 1968 the American Documentation Institute changed its name to American
Society for Information Science. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, departments of
(library and) information science had turned instead towards the social sciences. Leading programs have
increased their size and visibility with skillful publicity liberally using the words “information,”
“society,” and “technology.” “Information school” is currently a name or nickname of choice. These
programs address a variety of important topics, but they have been less successful in providing a coherent
explanation of the nature and scope of the field. It is wise for organizations to be prospecting for new
opportunities, but to be opportunistic without a coherent underlying rationale appears imprudent.
A related problem concerns the analysis of information services. Some progress can be made
towards a coherent, unified view of the roles of archives, libraries, museums, online information services,
and related organizations if they are treated as information-providing services (e.g. Buckland, 1991a), but
such an approach seems significantly incomplete on ordinary understandings of the providing of
information. Public libraries, for example, do more than simply provide information. Here again a deeper
or wider or different explanation is needed.

APPROACH
Our approach is to consider some key words: “Science,” “Information,” “Knowledge,” and
“Interdisciplinary” and to make distinctions between scientific, scholarly, and critical.
Although the word “science” is sometimes used broadly for any body of knowledge (e.g.
domestic science, library science), here we are using it in the normative sense as denoting formal and

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physical sciences (e.g. chemistry, mathematics, and physics). Science is a constructive enterprise. Being
scientific involves model-building. Hypotheses and theories are developed to explain and to predict
observable phenomena. To be scholarly involves more than being knowledgeable. It requires the
affirmative search for evidence contrary to one’s theories. This is true for all fields: in the humanities, the
social sciences, the sciences, and professional practices. In this context, being critical is not a matter of
being hostile or negative, but of asking questions about underlying assumptions and methodological
choices. How have conclusions been determined, or at least influenced, by particular assumptions or the
choice of method? The ideal is to be scientific and scholarly and critical. The more we can approach that
ideal the more robust our ideas will be.
It is also important to remember the distinction between things and their names: Describing some
phenomenon is a separate matter from deciding what to call it. Names can be multiple, ambiguous, and
unstable. Past discussion of information and related terms has been hindered by failure to recognize this
rather obvious distinction and any declarative statement in the form “Information is . . .” should be
viewed with suspicion absent some explanation of what is being referred to. Another useful guideline is
Ockham’s Razor, the principle that, other things being equal, the simplest explanation is generally to be
preferred. These principles provide a basis not only for examining individual notions of information, but
also to consider what kind of a field Information Science can be and, thereby, identify plausible terrain for
information school programs.

INFORMATION
The word “information” has been used so much that it has come to dominate discourse (Day,
2001). One information school website recently contained two striking statements: “161 exabytes of new
information are created each year” (They mean digital bits) and “Information: The power to transform the
world” (They don’t mean digital bits). Vagueness and inconsistency are advantageous for slogans and
using “chameleon words” that assume differing colors in different contexts allows flexibility for readers
to perceive what they wish. However, when clarity is sought more careful definitions are needed.
Our first restriction is to limit our use of “information” to its traditional association with human
knowing and learning. This differentiates our scope from other important fields that have also used the
name “Information Science.” One is Computer Science, concerned with the theory and application of
algorithms. Another, concerned with entropy, probability, Shannon-Weaver information theory, physical
patterns (in-form-ing), and related topics, is sometimes referred to as the “physics of information.” Also,
the word “information” is, of course, used in “information technology” (IT, also ICT, for Information and
Communication Technologies) but largely restricted in practice to the use of electronics for
communication and computation. These other areas are not considered here. Instead, we are concerned
with those areas generally understood as being within the scope of “library and information science”
(LIS) and the interests of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. For a wider and
more detailed analysis by Machlup and Mansfield of numerous fields with some interest in information
see Study (1983).
Jonathan Furner has wisely reminded us that for each of the multiple meanings of the word
“information” there is already another satisfactory more specific word (Furner 2004). Information studies
does not require use of the word “information”! Another move is to sort the varied uses of the word
“information” into categories, including:

– Information-as-knowledge for knowledge imparted, what was learned as a result of being informed;
– Information-as-process for becoming informed, for learning; and
– Information-as-thing for bits, bytes, books, sounds, images, and anything physical perceived as
signifying. The word “document,” which was not, historically, limited to textual media, can be
used as a technical term for information-as-thing (Buckland 1991a, b, 1997).

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correctly, what people do with information-as-thing, with documents, that is to say with data, records,
texts, and media of every kind.

THE USE OF DOCUMENTS
We find, when we look, that documents are widely used for a variety of purposes. Governments
use documents to control us, requiring the use of passports, income tax returns, drivers’ licenses, and so
on. Schools use textbooks and curriculum standards to guide both students and teachers. Religions use
sacred texts to instill beliefs and to influence conduct. Merchants invest heavily in advertisements to
influence what we buy. Politicians use slogans and policy statements to win votes and to attract financial
and electoral support. Entertainers use varied media to amuse us and, usually, to attract payments from us.
Individuals use messages to communicate and social media to attract attention. Museums present
interpretations of our heritage through the selective presentation and skilful interpretation of artifacts.
Libraries provide access to collections of documents . . . and so on. Anyone can make such a list and the
list quickly becomes a long one.
Contemplating this or any similar list reminds us of some important points:

1. Documents are pervasive in society and shape our lives. Dependence on documents has increased over
time. Modern economies are based on an ever-increasing division of labor and on the existence of
markets, both of which depend on communication and documentation, which in turn have been
progressively facilitated by technical innovations (writing, printing, telegraphy, radio, Internet, etc.). As
Patrick Wilson put it, we are more and more dependant on “second-hand knowledge” (Wilson 1983).

2. The use of information and “information behavior” are ordinarily understood as referring to the
individual who would like to be informed. But, as is clear from the list, that is only a small part of the
story. Much of the use of documents is not initiated by the “user” but by a wide and diverse set of very
active agents (governments, schools, religions, merchants, etc.) with differing and sometimes competing
purposes.

3. The commonest form of information-related behavior is simply noticing things, a minimally active
role. It may be unintended (as when we hear thunder), unexpected, or unconscious (when subliminal).

4. The use of documents may include but does not reduce to fact-finding, information-seeking, or
problem-solving. As is clear from the list, the agendas and means are varied. Public libraries are not
simply information services, at least not in any simple or normal sense. “One of the things that public
libraries have done fairly well is to realize that their mission, their job, is about community building,”
states Martin Gómez (IMLS 2009, 9).

If we contemplate the list above or any similar list, it is reasonable to ask what term can embrace
this range of information-related activities. The common feature is that they are cultural. Here we do not
use “culture” in the popular sense of high culture, denoting grand opera and other elitist activities, but in
the broader academic sense used in anthropology. The classic definition is by sir Edward Tylor in 1871:
“Culture or civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes
knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society”(Tylor 1871, 1). The simplest assumption, then, is that the uses of information, when
we speak of information-as-thing, are properly seen as an active engagement in the cultural sphere.

KNOWLEDGE
The theory of knowledge has been dominated by analytical philosophy with an emphasis on the
Starting with this last category, information-as-thing, we can ask what documents do or, more,

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truth of propositional sentences and knowledge as justified true belief. This approach is problematic in
several ways. We can question the adjective “justified” since nobody is likely to accept that they hold
unjustified beliefs. The “true” criterion also does not hold up well on inspection. In ordinary discourse,
“true” tends to imply consistency with some objective reality, but the subjective knowing of objective
reality is philosophically suspect and in practice, “true” reduces to congruence with some other prior
belief or assumption.
Propositional knowledge (justified true belief) is illustrated in this excerpt from the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Suppose, for example, that James, who is relaxing on a bench in a park, observes a dog that,
about 8 yards away from him, is chewing on a bone. So he believes
5. There is a dog over there.
Suppose further that what he takes to be a dog is actually a robot dog so perfect that, by vision
alone, it could not be distinguished from an actual dog. . . . Given these assumptions, (5) is of
course false. But suppose further that just a few feet away from the robot dog, there is a real dog.
Sitting behind a bush, he is concealed from James's view. Given this further assumption, James's
belief is true. So once again, what we have before us is a justified true belief that . . . gives us the
wrong result that James knows (5).

Analytical philosophy of this sort has little relevance to the everyday realities of a document-
pervaded society, our unavoidable dependence on second-hand knowledge, and the perennial need to
decide who and what to trust. A famous seventeen-century textbook on logic summarized the situation
rather well:

. . . a wide difference must be made between two kinds of truths: one, which relates simply to the
nature of things, and their unchangeable essence, independently of their existence; the others,
which relate to things existing, and especially to human accidents and events, . . .
In the first kind of truths, since everything is necessary, nothing is true which is not true
universally; and thus we may conclude that a thing is false, if it is false in a single case. But if we
think of following the same rules in the belief of human events, we shall always, except by
accident, judge falsely, and make a thousand false reasonings about them. For these events being
contingent in their nature, it would be ridiculous to seek in them necessary truth: . . . (Arnauld
1662/1850, 345-6).

In 1946 Gilbert Ryle wrote: “Philosophers have not done justice to the distinction which is quite
familiar to all of us between knowing that something is the case and knowing how to do things” (Ryle
1946, 4). He argued that knowing how cannot be defined in terms of knowing that and that knowing how
was logically prior to knowing that. But this is not enough. The theory of knowledge needs to be extended
further to another distinction quite familiar to all of us: knowing about. In our daily lives we operate with
necessarily imperfect, incomplete, and uncertain knowledge. We must continually make decisions on
whether to depend on this document or that. In real life we have imperfect knowing about and we have to
rely more on trust than on truth. Seen this way, the importance of marshalling the most suitable available
documents for ourselves or for others, a core concern of LIS, is evident. In this situation a distinction
between knowledge and belief seems questionable, and propositional knowledge, preoccupied with the
truth of single sentences, becomes an implausible theoretical foundation.

BECOMING INFORMED
The remaining category, information-as-process, is concerned with the imparting of knowledge,
with learning. So long as we are concerned with understanding rather than mere memorization, learning

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depends on what we already know. Learning is incremental, a change in what we knew rather than simple
addition, except, it seems, in LIS research where we find a fundamental deficiency. A detailed content
analysis of LIS literature by Allan Konrad found that only 5.6% of a selection of 413 canonical texts
examined were consonant with the principle that learning is incremental; most (88.8%, including 83% in
a subset categorized as cognitive studies) either ignored the principle or made only token mention of it;
and 5.6% explicitly or implicitly refuted it (Konrad 2007, 499-569, esp. 508).
Given the trend of the field towards the social sciences and explicit talk of a “cognitive turn” (e.g.
Ingwersen & Järvelin 2005), these findings are striking. We can speculate on the reasons. One
consideration is that it is very difficult in practice to take into account what individuals already know.
Another factor is that formal and algorithmic techniques by their nature resist the inclusion of culture
(Ekbia 2008). Newtonian physics allowed no place for heaven or hell, and information science has
focused heavily on information storage and retrieval systems, in effect on document-supplying systems,
rather than systems that inform (Buckland 1991a, 78-80). Third, with some commendable exceptions
(such as Allen Bryce and Carol Kuhltau) the so-called cognitive turn has tended instead to be a rather
narrowly-based cognitive science turn. (Witness the frequent reference to artificial intelligence papers
rather than the wider realms of educational psychology). The frequent reference to “states of knowledge”
implies a dubious simplification, since each time we remember something we create a slightly different
recollection. Søren Brier characterized the situation as follows: The current dominant paradigm is heavily
influenced by cognitive science which is a logical and algorithmic research program that investigates
information processing in humans, animals, and machines. This approach is based on Wiener's
Cybernetics, Shannon-Weaver information theory, logic, set theory, and computation. It is inadequate
because it fails to accommodate the cultural realities of knowing and communicating, the
phenomenological complexity of perception and understanding, or the interaction of the social and the
personal. The result is a general confusion among many alternative meanings of the word "information"
and an approach to information behavior that is inhospitable to both communication and learning (Brier
2008).

LANGUAGE AND FACTS
Information retrieval, widely regarded (along with bibliometrics) as being the most scientific part
of information studies, depends heavily on algorithmic operations on text, especially the co-occurrence of
specified words (actually character strings) in both query and searched documents. These methods are
enormously useful despite some weaknesses that arise from words having multiple meanings and variant
forms, different words having the same spelling, and meanings being unstable. Human communication, in
contrast, depends on cultural codes and meaning. Robert Fairthorne had good insights into these issues
with his careful distinction between mention and meaning and his explanation of the irresistible
obsolescence of subject indexing. Language evolves in dialog and discourse. The indexer is necessarily
backward-looking because index terms need to be based on usage already established in past discourse.
But the indexer also needs to be forward-looking because indexing is intended for future use. Word
meanings continue to evolve with time, but an index term inscribed at some fixed point in time recedes
into the past as discourse, language, and the indexer flow forward (Fairthorne, 1974; Buckland, 2007, in-
press).
If culture and language resist algorithms and formal techniques, more progress might be made if
we could reduce the literary to the factual. Paul Otlet thought so. He considered books and articles to be
inefficient, opinionated, and duplicative. His idea was to extracts facts from texts, like peas from pods,
and to organize the facts into an authoritative semantic web using concise unitary factual statements
(“monographs”) described, positioned, and collectively associated using the Universal Decimal
Classification (Frohmann, 2008). The result, he declared, could be shared as a communal extension of the
brain. (Otlet’s understanding of a “world brain,” shared with Wilhelm Ostwald and H. G. Wells, was a
community resource more like a rigorously edited Wikipedia than an autonomous entity like the computer