16916 words

Theoretical development of information

science: A brief history

Birger Hjørland

University of Copenhagen, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark

Pnl617@iva.ku.dk

Abstract

This paper presents a brief history of information science (IS) as viewed by the author. The term

‘information science’ goes back to 1955 and evolved in the aftermath of Claude Shannon’s

‘information theory’ (1948), which also inspired research into problems in fields of library science

and documentation. These subjects were a main focus of what became established as ‘information

science’, which from 1964 onwards was often termed ‘library and information science’ (LIS).

However, the usefulness of Shannon’s information theory as the theoretical foundation of the field

was been challenged. Among the strongest “paradigms” in the field is a tradition derived from the

Cranfield experiments in the 1960s and the bibliometric research following the publication of

Science Citation Index from 1963 and forward. Among the competing theoretical frameworks, ‘the

cognitive view’ became influential from the 1970s. Today information science is very fragmented,

but a growing number of researchers find that the problems in the field should be related to theories

of knowledge and understood from a social and cultural perspective, thereby re-establishing

connections with idea’s such as social epistemology which may have remained implicit in in the

field much of the time.

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1. Introduction

This paper briefly expounds theoretical developments in information science (IS). In practice

information science today may be considered synonym with library and information science, LIS

(see Hjørland, 2013for a more detailed discussion). This article is based on former accounts of the

subject (e.g. Wersig 2003; Bates 2005 and Talja, Tuominen and Savolainen 2005). Information

science has, however, a very disordered history, and the former descriptions need to be reconsidered

and extended. Therefore, this article attempts to fill a gap and to provide a broad overview of the

theoretical development of the field. It is necessarily selective and also subjective in the sense that

it reflects the priorities made by the author. As Pierre Bourdieu wrote about his outline of the

history of another field:

It is clear that it is not easy to construct the history of the sociology of science [or, as

here, of information science], not only because of the vast volume of ‘literature’ but also

because this is a field in which the history of the discipline is at stake (among others) in

struggles. Each of the protagonists develops a vision of this history consistent with the

interests linked to the position he occupies within the history; the different historical

accounts are oriented according to the position of their producer and cannot claim the

status of indisputable truth (Bourdieu, 2004, p. 9)

The point of departure in this paper is the term “information science” which according Shapiro

(1995) was quoined by Jason Farradane (1955). It was established in the same period as were

concepts such as ‘information technology’, ‘information processing’ and ‘information storage and

retrieval’ appeared. All these terms seems to owe their appearance to the new ‘information theory’

developed by, among others, communications engineer Claude Shannon (1948) in the article A

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Mathematical Theory of Communication. As Proffitt (2010) noted about the Oxford English

Dictionary’s coverage of the term “information”:

“The Supplement’s editors identified and included many of the earliest compounds

evoking the sense of information as data, something to be stored, processed, or

distributed electronically: information processing, information retrieval, information

storage (all three dated from 1950). In quick succession came terms relating to the

academic study of the phenomenon, appearing in a neatly logical sequence: first the idea

(information theory, 1950), next its budding adherents (information scientist, 1953),

then the established field of study (information science, 1955).”

Shannon’s (1948) ‘information theory’ seems therefore to be the direct or indirect reason for

establishing ‘information science’ about seven years later. One may claim, however, that the field is

older, that only the label is new. Rayward (1994, p. 238), for example, wrote that Paul Otlet’s

(1934) Traité de Documentation is one of the first information science textbooks (implying that the

content of information science is older than the name; see also Hjørland, in press c). We shall

return to this “pre-history of information science” below and here start with Shannon, who brought

not just a new theory, but in a much stronger way the idea that a theory in this field is possible at all.

Shannon’s theory brought a new conception of ‘information’, which in the narrow sense is

something which can be measured (e.g. in ‘bits’) and in a broader sense has been defined by

Michael Buckland (1991) as “information as thing” and by the Oxford English Dictionary as:

[2]d. Separated from, or without the implication of, reference to a person informed: that

which inheres in one of two or more alternative sequences, arrangements, etc., that

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produce different responses in something, and which is capable of being stored in,

transmitted by, and communicated to inanimate things. [Oxford English dictionary,

2010 update]

Although information science thus seemingly owes its name to Shannon’s information theory, it

also developed out of library science and documentation; but, as we shall see below, information

theory that founded the field bearing the name ‘information science’ later lost influence as other

theoretical frameworks became more important.

2. Selected aspects of the prehistory of information science

Fields like ‘library science’, ‘the science of bibliography’, ‘scientific information’ and

‘documentation’ can be understood as the predecessors of information science.

Called bibliography, documentation, and scientific information during the first five

decades of the twentieth century, the field became known as information science in the

early 1960s. (Kline, 2004) Pre-Ref

Version

One demonstration of this was the change in name that the American Documentation Institute

(founded in 1937) underwent when it became the American Society for Information Science in 1968

(now the Association for Information Science & Technology). The many names for fields that are

sometimes synonyms and sometimes separate fields in relation to information science, as well as

their rather complicated relations, are outlined in Hjørland (2013c) and shall not be repeated here.

Before the term ‘information science’ was used (i.e. before 1955) fields existed which were

concerned with how documents are described, classified, organized, communicated and used. In

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other words information science may be seen as part of a family of fields that all aimed to provide

optimal services, systems and infrastructures for different kinds of user groups. Such systems and

services might be termed ‘information systems and information services’; however, this is an

extremely broad concept that includes, among others, bibliographical systems and services, memory

institutions, scientific and scholarly information systems, documentation systems, management

information systems and knowledge organization systems. Many subtypes of what might be

considered information systems and services tend to form separate fields of study with separate

literatures. Library science, bibliography and documentation are basically about helping people find

the books, articles, pictures, music, information and so on they need or would like to read or

experience (including digital content and the application of advanced information technology),

which may be termed document representation and searching (often termed information storage

and retrieval). Librarians and information specialists help users retrieve the documents needed to

solve tasks, including writing theses and research papers (and to make systems that make such

retrieval optimal). They also help to ‘keep the valuable from oblivion’ (Wilson, 1968, p. 1). Thus,

prior to the establishment of information science, the core concept was the document. A document

should not be understood in the narrow, everyday meaning, but instead it is ‘any concrete or

symbolic indication, preserved or recorded, for reconstructing or for proving a phenomenon,

whether physical or mental’ (Briet, 1951, p.7]; here quoted from Buckland (1991, p.47). Briet’s

understanding of documents seems to be influenced by semiotic theory, although this is not made

explicit in her writings. Her famous example is that an antelope in Africa is not a document, but a

species that is kept in a zoo is. The example shows that the concept of ‘document’ should be

understood in connection to documenting activities.

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Different theoretical views have had their effects in library science, bibliography and

documentation. We shall not here consider them all. Subfields such as information retrieval (IR),

knowledge organization (KO), bibliometrics, and information behavior have a long ranges of

approaches. The facet analytic school with Ranganathan IN KO, for example, will not be

considered (see Hjørland, 2013b). The following presentation is thus highly selective and is

constructed in order to demonstrate developments considered overall important by the author.

2.1. Melvil Dewey

Library pioneer Melvil Dewey (1851–1931) had a strong practicalist influence on the field. His

classification system (DDC) did not attempt to optimize findability in any specific collection or for

any specific user group. Nor did it try to find optimal scientific or philosophical solutions to the

problem today termed ‘information retrieval’ (IR). Instead DDC was a compromise and a standard

which could be used by many different collections. His system is the dream of library management

much more than the dream of users. Dewey’s approach may have blocked the development of

library science towards becoming a true scholarly field by not connecting the field to philosophy

and subject fields. Although Dewey felt it important that libraries mediated high-quality books and

culture, he saw it as the job of subject specialists to make the document selection. His library

science was thereby reduced to purely technical issues (and such technical issues were not

understood as being connected with content, but were based on a dualistic view of technology and

content). It is also characteristic of Dewey that he took the cultural values of his time and of his

class and sex for granted: they were not examined, but were considered as given.

2.2. Henry Bliss

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Library scientist Henry Evelyn Bliss (1870–1955), on the other hand, based library classification on

knowledge developed in science and scholarship. He actually studied the different disciplines in

order to learn how scientists classified their fields. His main idea was that although there are many

different perspectives, it is possible to find overall lines of consensus on which to base bibliographic

classification (a view which was in accordance with the logical positivism dominant at that time).

His view is thus not as practicalist as Dewey’s, but it made library science much better connected to

and founded in scholarship, although his view on consensus perhaps seems problematic from the

perspective of our post-Kuhnian area.

2.3. The documentation movement

The documentation movement has already been mentioned with Briet’s development of the concept

of “document” as a broad term related to a semiotic point of view in which a document is

understood as a sign used to document something. The founders of this movement were Paul Otlet

(1868-1944) and Henri Lafontaine (1854-1943). This movement is not limited to libraries, but

focuses on bibliography and the task to provide documentation services based on subject analysis

and classification, but also on providing abstracts and using the most advanced information

technology. Documentation (and the concept of document and the – often implicitly - underlying

semiotic philosophy) lost influence with the growing influence of the term “information” (see

Hjørland, 2000). It is important to say, however, that an important re-introduction of documentation

theory with the concept of documents has taken place with information science (see Buckland,

1991a; Hjørland, 2000, 2002; Frohmann, 2004; Furner, 2004; Lund, 2008 and Ørom, 2007).

2.4. Social epistemology

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Library scientist Jesse Shera (1903–1982) and his colleague Margaret Egan (1905–1959) developed

a conception termed ‘social epistemology’. Shera found that ‘previously, librarianship had

developed merely “as a body of techniques evolved from certain ad hoc assumptions about how

people use books ...”’ (Shera, 1970, p. 29) and he tried to develop the field on the basis of

sociological theory. Social epistemology was defined as the study of those processes by which

society as a whole seeks to achieve a perceptive or understanding relation to the total

environment---physical, psychological, and intellectual (Egan and Shera, 1952, p. 132; original

emphasis). The ‘focus of attention’ of this new discipline should be ‘the analysis of the production,

distribution, and utilization of intellectual products (Egan and Shera, 1952, pp. 133–134). Jonathan

Furner (2002) does not, however, consider Egan and Shera’s social epistemology related to either

the later field known by this name or to the sociology of science; alternatively Furner suggested that

Egan and Shera’s view should be understood as a psychological or individualist approach later to be

taken up by the cognitive perspective. I do not fully agree with this view (although Furner indicates

some obvious links and also correctly says that their writings have ‘an air of quaintness when

placed alongside representatives of newer sociologies’). Egan and Shera were not satisfied with the

individualist approaches of their own time and tried to formulate an alternative:

As she [Egan] has pointed out, psychologists have studied behaviour with reference to

the conduct of the individual; epistemologists have studied the origins, growth, and

development of knowledge, but again with reference to the individual. The sociologists

have studied the behaviour of people in groups, but never really with reference to the

influence of knowledge upon that behaviour. In other words, epistemology has never

been taken out of the realm of individual’s relation to knowledge and studied in relation

to the sum total of social behaviour, social action. (Shera, 1970, p. 85).

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It should be considered that Egan and Shera wrote at a time, in which Thomas Kuhn’s philosophy

(which is a social epistemology, cf. Wray, 2011) had not yet revolutionized the theory of

knowledge. Egan and Shera’s approach was also based on documents (or ‘graphic records’) as the

core concept of the field. An interpretation in retrospect might be that they too were searching for

something like a semiotic theory, in which the meaning attributed to documents is determined by

human social documenting practices. However, given the background knowledge of their time, this

project remained somewhat unclear, as indicated by Furner (2002). There are two issues which in

my view make Egan and Shera’s approach social (contrary to Furner’s view):

(1) Shera found that librarianship has to be based on subject knowledge:

“[A] good undergraduate major in a subject field is essential to the librarian, and he

should pursue his subject specialty as far as his resources permit” (Shera, 1968, p. 317)

(2) Shera was obviously interested in libraries and their social and cultural importance in a

historical perspective (cf., Shera, 1968), which is a perspective clearly distinct from psychological

and cognitive approaches. A positive evaluation was also expressed by philosopher and information

scientist Patrick Wilson (1927–2003):

Social epistemology with a focus on textual objects and with an eye on the actual and

possible roles of information systems is a productive approach to our field (Wilson,

2002, electronic source, no page).

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Unfortunately, social approaches were discontinued or marginalized and less fruitful approaches

came to dominate the field in the next decades. Today, however, such social-epistemological

conceptions have got a renaissance, as discussed later.

jis.sagepub.co.uk

3. Information theory

As mentioned above, engineer Claude Shannon developed the so-called information theory in 1948

(which, however, is often considered a misnomer for a theory of data transmission). Information

theory is a mathematical theory about the technological issues involved whenever data is

transmitted, stored or retrieved. Its basic idea is that the harder it is to guess what is received, the

more information one has got. The theory involves concepts such as communication channels,

bandwidth, noise, data transfer rate, storage capacity, signal-to-noise ratio, error rate, feedback and

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so on (see Figure 1).

Thomas Haigh (2001, p. 31) describes how Shannon’s theory became affiliated with

documentation.

Information gained a new cachet from ‘information theory’ and Shannon’s information

theory resonated far beyond its technical niche. During the late 1950s, ‘information’

seemed scientific, modern, and fashionably. The 1950s saw a flurry of interest in the

problems of ‘scientific information’. Scientific and technical work was being published

in unprecedented quantities, spurring interest in technologies and systems to classify,

abstract, distribute, and index it. Alarmists warned that an ‘information explosion’

threatened Western scientific leadership during the cold war because America’s lack of

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centralized indexing and abstracting left scientists and engineers doomed to repeat

previous published work.

Shannon’s ‘information theory’ has been and still is extremely important in engineering and

computer science. However, the question for us is how important is Shannon’s theory for the field

now established as ‘information science’ (or LIS)? Linguist and information scientist Henning

Spang-Hanssen (2001, electronic source, no page) wrote:

‘information theory’ is not concerned with documents, and not even primarily

concerned with the content or meaning of documents or other symbolic representations,

but concentrates on the efficient transmission of signals, which may – or may not –

convey meaning. It is therefore unfortunate to confuse the term information theory with

information as occurring in “information science” and “information retrieval”.

As already mentioned information theory gave rise to a new understanding of ‘information’ and it

became extremely popular, not just in telecommunications, but also in many other fields, including

psychology, and it became common to consider libraries, journals, reference books and the whole

scientific communication system as ‘information storage and retrieval systems’. An example that

demonstrates this influence is The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Sills, 1968),

which contains an overall entry for ‘Information Storage and Retrieval’ (IS&R), which is

subdivided into five subsections:

I: The field [Information Storage and Retrieval] (Becker, 1968).

II: Information services (Mitchell, 1968).

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III: Libraries (Shera, 1968).

IV: Reference materials and books (Vose, 1968).

V: Bibliographic issues in the behavioral sciences (Bry, 1968).

By assigning these subjects under the label ‘IS&R’ this entry (with its subentries) reflects a new

information-theoretical view of libraries, bibliographies, documentation and the scholarly

communication system. On the other hand, information theory is not really considered in the

content of the entries. It seems just to be a new label for what was formerly termed library science

or documentation. There is no direct discussion of the relation between subjects presented and the

terms ‘information’, ‘IS&R’ or ‘information theory’, although the article about the field (Becker,

1968) focused on the application of technology and the creation of a new research field named

‘IS&R’ urged by the problems caused by the so-called ‘information explosion’ (implying the

concept of information defined by [Oxford English Dictionary, 2010, sense 2d], and explicitly

criticized by, for example, Buckland (1991b), Spang-Hanssen, 2001). Also the article on

information services (Mitchell, 1968) mentioned the application of new technology and the paper

has ‘the information crisis’ as its point of departure, but at its core the paper reflects a traditional

documentation perspective rather than anything inspired by information theory. It should also be

mentioned that Shera (presented above) wrote the section about libraries (Shera, 1968) and if

anything this article reflects an alternative to the information-theoretical point of view. It is

therefore not convincingly demonstrated that the subjects described under the label ‘information

storage and retrieval’ can adequately and fruitfully be presented and discussed from the perspective

of information theory. On the one hand the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

provides an example of an influence of information theory in information science and on the other

hand it indicates that information theory did not influence the content of the field in a deeper way.

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This use of terms like ‘information’ and ‘information storage and retrieval’ properly reflected

expectations and hopes about the usefulness of Shannon’s theory (or something like it) in the future

more than it reflected the actual use of that theory or considerations about the nature of the field.

Another indication of this expectation was a Danish conference in 1957 (Blegvad, Elberling,

Johnsen and Rode, 1957) documented that prominent scholars had then found that – at last – a

theory or theoretical framework (Shannon’s) which seemed to be fruitful for attacking the problems

of scholarly and scientific communication.

Shannon’s theory gave rise to the measurement of information by the unit of the ‘bit’, which may be

applied to, for example, how information can be compressed and stored on a disk drive (not to be

confused with the number of binary digits that may be stored on a given drive, which are not ‘bits’

in Shannon’s sense). However, as pointed out by many, this measure is not particular relevant to the

field of library, information and documentation studies. Michael Buckland, for example, wrote:

There is a valid and respectable field of formal information theory based on propositions,

algorithms, uncertainty, truth statements, and the like, but its formal strengths are also its limits and

make [it] inappropriate and inadequate for the concerns of LIS (Buckland, 2005, p. 686). Spang-

Hanssen explained why Shannon’s theory does not apply to information science:

The amount of information is here [in Shannon’s information theory] measured by the

decrease of uncertainty resulting from the choice of a particular message among a set of

possible messages. […] I shall only mention a few points to show the limitation of this

measure to our conception of information.

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In Shannon’s sense, the amount of information is proportional to the length of the

message (in a given code). This obviously does not apply to the utilization of

literature as information. Among other things, an abstract may be as informative as

the complete paper.

Shannon’s amount of information presupposes a measure of the uncertainty on

behalf of the receiver. By the utilization of literature as information no measurable

uncertainty can be defined generally.

Shannon’s amount of information applies to some explicit coding and cannot in the

case of normal writing (or speech) account for semantic relations that are not shown

by similarities of expression. E.g. the synonyms ‘serials’ and ‘periodicals’ would be

treated as different messages (or parts of messages) having different ‘amounts of

information’. (Spang-Hanssen, 2001, electronic source, no page).

As mentioned there were – particularly in the 1950s – great expectations that Shannon’s theory

might, at last, provide a fruitful theoretical foundation for the study of scholarly communication,

libraries, information searching, and reference books and so on. However, much of this must have

been nothing but a dream. Most information researchers today do not find Shannon’s theory a

proper theoretical basis for the field, although some (e.g. an editorial in Journal of Information

Science) have argued otherwise:

‘The boundaries of information science: information theory is alive and well’ (Cawkell,

1990).

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However, Cawkell’s examples are about technological problems rather than about library,

documentation or information problems, because Cawkell was in my opinion talking about

computer science rather than about information science. It is not the job of information scientists,

for example, to construe an algorithm that makes it possible to compress images in order to reduce

computer space (but rather to say something about which images should be retrieved for given

purposes, how they should be made findable). Information theory does play a role in modern

information retrieval research, in which the information of a given term is measured in relation to

term frequencies (Baeza-Yates and Ribeiro-Neto, 2011, p. 218-219). Although this is the case, it

would be wrong to say that information theory is the theoretical basis for IR research. As van

Rijsbergen stated:

In the context of information retrieval (IR), information, in the technical meaning given

in Shannon's theory of communication, is not readily measured (Shannon and Weaver

[1949]). In fact, in many cases one can adequately describe the kind of retrieval by

simply substituting 'document' for 'information' (van Rijsbergen, 1979, p. 1).

Chew et al. (2011) is an example of a recent paper which takes information theory very serious in

relation to IR, but it also indicates that information theory has not been strongly connected with this

area:

It would probably be fair to say that IT [information theory] (not to be confused with

information science) has been at most incidental in the development of IR.

Nevertheless, IT has not passed IR completely. (Chew et al., 2011, p. 39).

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Whether modern IR research should be considered part of information science is also an issue.

Historically leading IR-researchers used to publish in IS-journals, but today the mathematical and

statistical parts of IR seems to have immigrated to computer science publications. This supports the

view that information theory is affiliated with computer science, but not with IS.

Gernot Wersig (2003, p. 312) found that the very notion of semiotics ‘in fact became one of the

most important critiques of too simple an application of information theory to human

communication’. This may be an understatement, although each theory has, of course, its own

domain in which it is the best model. Today, the information-theoretic understanding is often

contrasted with the semiotic understanding, for example, by Fiske (2011, pp. 37–60). Information

theory may have been a barrier to establishing information science in its own right because this field

is related to meaning and semantics, which are dimensions which are not considered by information

theory (see Nöth, 2013, for an overview of the criticism of information theory from semiotic

perspectives).

If information science has rightfully skipped its foundation in information theory, the concept of

‘information’ itself may turn out to be superfluous. Furner found that

…philosophers of language have modeled the phenomena fundamental to human

communication in ways that do not require us to commit to a separate concept of

‘information.’ Indeed, we can conclude that such a concept is unnecessary for IS. Once

the concepts of interest have been labeled with conventional names such as ‘data,’

‘meaning,’ ‘communication,’ ‘relevance,’ etc., nothing is left (so it may be argued) to

which to apply the term ‘information.’ One corollary of such a conclusion is the equally

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negative judgment that the field of IS is itself misnamed, and that its subject matter

should more appropriately be treated as a branch of communication studies, semiotics,

or library studies (Furner, 2004, p. 428).

Also Bernd Frohmann deflated the idea that information is more important than documents, arguing

instead that information...exists only as an effect of the ontologically primary elements: documents

and documentary practices. It has, therefore, only a secondary or derived ontological status; it is an

effect of the relative stability of documentary practices. Once practices stabilize, information can

emerge (Frohmann, 2004, p. 18). It would be unfortunate now to skip the name “information

science” but we should consider information as secondary to social documentary practices, as

suggested by Frohmann (2004), Day (2011) and Goguen (1997), among others.

4. “The systems oriented paradigm” and “the subject knowledge view”

We have seen that there were great expectations to Shannon’s theory, and Wersig wrote:

One could call the developmental stage [of information science] from1948 to the 1970s

the 'Shannon and Weaver phase', because most of the discussions and attempts to

structure the concept of information relied on the reception of Shannon via Weaver

(Wersig, 2003, p. 313).

Following the 'Shannon and Weaver phase' Wersig presents “the cognitive viewpoint”. But before

we turn to that, it should be said that an important issue seems to be lacking in his outline (which

may be due to a neglect of considering development in practice).

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The period from the beginning of the 1970s to about 1990 was a period in which online information

services developed rapidly and influenced information science and information professionals very

much. Such online services revolutionized library reference services and from my point of view

such services is very much what information science and information profession is about. As

explained in Hjørland (in press, a) information specialists developed roles as expert searchers and

contributed to the design of online databases (including knowledge of thesauri, natural language,

citation searching, etc.). This development cannot be considered an application of Shannon’s theory

and must therefore be based on some alternative framework (to be discussed below).

At the research front around 1970 – and important to this day – was a paradigm developed by the

so-called Cranfield-experiments (see Cleverdon, Mills and Keen, 1966; Cleverdon, 1970), which

was later labeled “the physical paradigm” (e.g. by Ellis, 1992a, b) or “the systems centered

approach” (e.g. by Saracevic, 1999). The experimental environment was Cranfield College of

Aeronautics and the tests were carried out in the same way as other technological products are

tested (hence the name “physical paradigm”).

The physical paradigm is derived from the importation of the scientific method into

LIS. It views information as flowing from a source to a destination, the user, who is

relatively passive. The focus is on the process of translation information into a message

that the system can convey to the user, as suggested by Claude Shannon’s

Communication Theory.

…Research that adheres to the physical paradigm typically compares systems to a

relatively arbitrary notion of what a successful search might be. For example, Cyril

Cleverdon’s Cranfield studies (discussed in Chapter 4 and 11) compared different forms

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of subject representation using predetermined searches with predetermined results. If

the predetermined results were retrieved, a search was considered successful.

Cleverdon’s studies were among the most influential, but many other studies follow the

same paradigm (Olson and Boll, 2001, p. 266)

The Cranfield studies introduced the famous measures “recall” and “precision” in order to evaluate

the efficiency of different systems and search strategies – which gave rise to an enormous literature

about the concept “relevance”. The simple idea is that all relevant documents should be retrieved

while non-relevant documents (noise) should be avoided. All three terms are still core terms in

information science, but it is an issue whether they should be based on scientific criteria (and expert

evaluations) or on user-based criteria and on user-evaluations1. In the Cranfield experiments, the

evaluation of systems and search strategies were done by subject specialists2, whereas the later user-

based approach let the users make the evaluation3. The most explicit scientific criteria of relevance

and recall have been developed in evidence based medicine, cf. Hjørland (in press a). Olson and

Boll’s quote above said that the Cranfield experiments used “relatively arbitrary notion of what a

1 I thus disagree with the view that recall and precision cannot reflect user preferences as stated by Baeza-Yates and

Ribeiro-Neto, 2011, p. 144. Su (1992, p. 514) for example, found: “Value of search results as a whole has two strong

correlates: user’s satisfaction with completeness of search results and user’s satisfaction with precision of the search”.

2 “Each document is evaluated by three assessors in TReC. Inter-indexer consistency is at an average of 30% between

all three assessors, and at just under 50% between any two assessors (Voorhees, 2002). This represents a fundamental

problem of any evaluation following the Cranfield paradigm: relevance assessments are highly subjective.” (Stock and

Stock, 2013, p. 491).

3 Bawden (1990, p. 99-100) wrote: “The UOE [user oriented evaluation] approach to relevance assessment will be

diametrically opposed to the laboratory experiment approach, well illustrated by Martyn and Lancaster (1981), who

suggested that ’relevance judgments by a representative user group … entail an undesirable degree of subjectivity’. It is

this ‘subjectivity’ reflecting the true user need, which UOE must capture and control.”

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successful search might be”. I do not agree in this statement (and not either in view that the physical

paradigm should be understood as based on Shannon’s theory). In a former publication I described

how evaluations were actually carried out:

Cleverdon (1970) reanalyzed some results from the Cranfield II experiments. The types

of search questions discussed were both “realistic” or “real-life questions” and

“prepared questions” (which is surprising, given the description of this view from the

user-oriented community). Relevance assessments were made by people with different

backgrounds, mostly scientists in the field. Each assessor evaluated each document (in

full text) on a five-point scale and made qualitative notes about the assessment. Most

important is that relevance was evaluated in relation to its possible function for the user

because this is directly opposed to how the systems view is mostly being described. The

paper further discussed how relevance assessments vary greatly among different

assessors. Appendix 1 in Cleverdon (1970) lists the test-questions and the real

documents used in the test. This seems important because it makes interpretations of the

relevance-assessments possible. This procedure seems different from how it is described

by the user-oriented researchers (Hjørland, 2010, p. 220).

I do not see this procedure as a “relatively arbitrary notion of what a successful search might be” as

quoted above, but it is correct that the view of that time was mostly based on a positivist

assumptions. What was not investigated was how different “paradigms” in the field have different

evaluation criteria (and a discussion of on which subject knowledge view evaluations should be

performed). The reservations raised by Olson and Boll in relation to the physical paradigm may be

seen as a justification to their next section, which is: “The cognitive paradigm”. However, if the

21

cognitive paradigm does not in reality make better solutions for users – as I claim I fail to do – then

Olson and Boll’s reservations posed against the physical paradigm fall flat.

Information science started with the underlying premise that information specialists needs subject

knowledge (just as we saw that Shera, 1968, argued for subject knowledge in librarianship4). The

term “information scientist” was first used by Farradane (1953) two years before the term

“information science” was first used and was used specifically to denote a scientist trained to help

other scientists in finding information: the qualifications were a degree in science or engineering, a

second language and 5 years’ experience in information work. The Institute of Information

Scientists established 1958 reflected this definition (see Vickery and Vickery, 1987, pp. 361-369).

Robinson and Bawden (2013) also underlined the subject-based nature of early British information

science. It seems therefore that information science in practice was founded on “the subject

knowledge view”, somewhat related to what was later named “the domain-analytic view” by

Hjørland and Albrechtsen (1995). The important difference may be that the subject knowledge view

that time was mainly “positivist” (assuming consensus among researchers) while the theory of

knowledge today is more influenced by paradigm theory (assuming conflicting values and dissensus

in “information”). In other words: The subjectivity in relevance assessments in both experts and

users should be examined, and perhaps the best explanation in the variations is to be found in the

different theories and paradigms to which the assessors subscribe.

“The systems centered approach” is, by the way, a bad term because it not just about computers, but

also about the documents represented in the databases, their different genres, terminology,

relevance, properties, subject access points etc. (and in this respect can be seen as a continuation of

4 Patrick Wilson (1983, p. 181) argued that an information specialist in reality has to function as an ‘authority on authorities’.

22

documentation as described above). I do not see information science as primarily about human-

computer interaction but about human interaction with mankind’s recorded knowledge and culture

(via computers). It can be mentioned, for example, that Science Citation Index was among the

important bibliographic databases developed (in 1963). This gave rise to the study of how

researchers and documents are connected in citation networks. It also provided basis for coupling

information science with the sociology and philosophy of science (e.g. studying how disciplines

differ, motivations to cite other papers etc.). This field (bibliometrics) has today developed into one

of the most important research fields in information science (as well as other fields), and because its

links with sociology and philosophy, it has potentials to be an important part of the theoretical

foundation for information science (although that field too is often based on positivist assumptions).

From this perspective information science is a metascience concerned with the optimization of

infrastructures and scholarly communication in different domains (cf., Talja, 2010; Hjørland, in

Press, b).

5. Cognitive theory

‘Cognitive science’ or ‘cognitive sciences’ is an interdisciplinary research field with roots in

cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence and philosophy. It is an offshoot of

Shannon’s information theory along with fields like cybernetics and control theory, and the

development of computer technology. The field was established around 1975 with Norman and

Rummelhart’s Explorations in Cognition (1975) being among the first books about it. The journal

Cognitive Science started in 1977 and The Cognitive Science Society held its first annual meeting

in 1979. Cognitive theory, or more precisely, the computational theory of mind, as it developed in

this movement represents a particular kind of functionalism in which cognitive processes (in

humans, animals and computers) may be described as information processing. All behavior is

23

understood as rule-based (implemented in programs). Units of information take the form of mental

representations. The computational theory of mind redefined human beings as processors of

information, whereby they opened the way for researchers to rigorously study mental processes

using the tools of science and computer technology, enabling them to make thinking visible and

open to experiments. It is therefore also characteristic of cognitive science that theories and models

about human cognition may be tested on computers and vice versa, and that new developments in

computer science inspired new models of human cognition. Much of the technical language used in

cognitive theory is appropriated from information theory and computer technology. An important

part of the theory is the dichotomy between hardware and software – and that software may run on

different kinds of hardware (brains or computers). One of the underlying assumptions is also that

the study of general psychology can be used to develop computers which imitate human intelligence

(‘artificial intelligence’). Like Shannon’s information theory, cognitive science was received with

extraordinary optimism and excitement in the beginning. Philosophically it represented a rationalist

turn:

The philosophical antecedents of cognitive theory are numerous, but one philosopher

stands out as having a profound effect on the assumptions made by many cognitive

theorists. René Descartes (1596–1650) is often referred to as a rationalist philosopher,

meaning that he focused upon the workings of the mind. … Descartes posited the notion

that humans have innate ideas and that there is a duality between mind and body. These

two ideas were to be seminal for cognitive theory. They, along with the computer

metaphor, significantly directed the course cognitive theory would take and would be

the source of many of the critical debates concerning it (Faux, 2014, p. 250).

5.1. Criticism of cognitive theory

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There has been much criticism of the view that humans are information processing devices. The

criticism seems different from the criticism of Shannon’s theory where everybody seemed to agree

that this would be a fruitful theory if it was just used in its proper domain. Although this may also

be the case with the computational theory of mind, the debate here seems to be much more

existential: whether or not it is a fruitful theory of human cognition at all. We saw above that there

is a link between the computational theory of mind and rationalism. The classical opposition to

rationalism came from empiricism. Empiricism does not assume innate ideas, but is based on the

view that humans are born with a tabula rasa, an empty mind. Empiricism is related to

associationism and behaviorism, and based on these alternative philosophical perspectives the

computational approach known as neural networks was developed. The theory (and technology) of

neural networks represents an alternative theory that does not assume the existence of mental

representations, as cognitive theory does. However, we shall not go deeper into behaviorism and

neural networks because both rationalism and empiricism are based on an individualist philosophy,

which in my view represents a trap which can be avoided if we take a historicist and pragmatic

point of departure. Before we turn to that, it should be emphasized that the point raised in this

paragraph is extraordinary: that core issues related to the development of today’s front-line

technologies are based on classical philosophical issues.

Cultural psychologist Carl Ratner wrote about ‘the psychological fallacy’ which is as relevant to

cognitivism as it is to other alternatives to cultural psychology:

In 1910 Dewey wrote a statement that expresses a central tenet of cultural psychology.

He said that the processes that animate and form consciousness lie outside it in social

life. Therefore, the objective for psychologists is to use mental phenomena (e.g.,

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perception, emotions) as clues for comprehending the life processes that they represent.

[…] ‘The supposition that these states [of consciousness] are somehow existent by

themselves and in this existence provide the psychologist with ready-made material is

just the supreme case of the ‘psychological fallacy’’ (Ratner, 2002, p. 3).

Two of the major critics of the computational theory of mind were also two of cognitive theory’s

architects. Ulrich Neisser (1976) criticized cognitive theory for being too focused upon laboratory

research, arguing that it lacks face validity because of this; thus, its applicability to the study of how

people think and solve problems in real-world settings is limited at best. To overcome this, research

needs to be conducted in real-world settings. Jerome Bruner (1990) has criticized cognitive theory

for becoming technicalized (p. 4): cognitive theory has fixated on how people process information

at the expense of understanding how we construct meaning. Bruner thus shifted the perspective

from cognitivism to cultural psychology.

‘Through a cultural lens, the notion of abstract, individual processors of information

becomes a shallow and one-dimensional view of the very deep and complex set of

activities we call thinking’ (Faux, 2014, p. 251).

Faux also summarizes the critique of cognitive theory by social constructionists, postmodernists and

humanists. These critiques converge on the notion that we are embodied beings in the world and

that our thinking is a function, not of information processing, but of social interaction in cultural

contexts.

In an article in Human IT the Swedish philosopher Peter Gärdenfors noted that

26

The role of culture and society in cognition was marginalized in early cognitive

science. These were regarded as problem areas to be addressed when an

understanding of individual cognition had been achieved. . . .

However, when the focus of cognitive theories shifted away from symbolic

representations, semantic and pragmatic research reappeared on the agenda . . .

. . . a second tradition turns the study programme upside down: actions are seen as

the most basic entities …. (Gärdenfors, 1999).

Gärdenfors thus put forward a view related to that of Frohmann (2004) that the study of information

has to start with human activities, and that the approach used in cognitive science and in

information science has to be turned upside down. This is also the view that informs the present

author.

5.2. The cognitive view in information science

The above section has focused on the cognitive view in general. We shall now focus on the

discourse about the cognitive view in information science. The cognitive viewpoint in IS was

initially formulated by Brookes (1980)5, Belkin and colleagues (Belkin, 1984, 1990; Belkin, Oddy

and Brooks, 1982) and Ingwersen (1982, 1992). Core theoretical assumptions seem to be:

5 Kantor (2010, pp. 2721-2722 ) wrote: “In the field of Library and Information Science, it has seemed that one might

want to know something about the relation between the “amount of information” and something else, which Brookes

[1980] has called the “increase in knowledge.” Brookes proposed that the phenomenon of importance to information

science is that the transmission of information to a suitable recipient results in an increase in the amount of knowledge

“held by” that recipient. The idea, while often referenced, does not seem to have led to any serious attempt to provide a

measurement of either the “amount of information” or the “in- crease in quantity of knowledge”” (emphasis in original).

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1. That abstract models of the human mind can be applied directly in computer systems and

provide a basis for research in IR. Belkin (1984), for example, proposed the MONSTRAT-

model and Ingwersen (1992) proposed the closely related MEDIATOR model.

2. Belkin’s “ASK” hypothesis (Anomalous State of Knowledge) (e.g. presented in Belkin

2005), which understands a recipient’s recognition of a conceptual state of knowledge that is

anomalous with respect to some goal of the recipient. The recipient has a desire to resolve

this anomaly and this desire motivates the recipient’s information seeking behavior.

3. An understanding of criteria of relevant information as something that depends on users’

judgments of quality of the relationship between information and information need at a

certain point in time, and which can be measured (Borlund, 2003; Schamber et al., 1990)

4. An emphasis on the study of users in an abstract or generalized sense (rather than, for

example, on the study of documents, domains, cultures, information systems and services,

“memory institutions” – or on the study of users from cultural, historical and social

perspectives)

5. A tendency to seek explanations about information phenomena in universal, psychological

mechanisms rather than in social, historical and culturally specific circumstances.

Two concrete examples of systems claimed to be based on the cognitive approach are the Book

House (developed in information science) and WordNet (developed in cognitive science, not within

information science). The analysis of such concrete achievements seems important in order to

understand a given approach. Hjørland (2013e) made an examination of these two systems and

found that it is unclear which role the study of users has in reality played in their development. In

spite of their explicit basis in cognitivism, they may actually largely be based in subject knowledge.

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Sanna Talja, Kimmo Tuominen and Reijo Savolainen provided an examination of different views in

information science in which they placed ‘the cognitive view’ under ‘constructivism’ (more

specifically under ‘cognitive constructivism’) and wrote:

In IS [information science], constructivist ideas are commonly labelled under ‘the

cognitive viewpoint’. The cognitive viewpoint in IS […], does not represent

cognitivism, however. Cognitivism is an approach that significantly informed artificial

intelligence in drawing straightforward analogies between human information

processing and computing (Ingwersen, 1992, pp. 19–25, 227). The cognitive viewpoint

in IS differs from cognitivism by laying major emphasis on the way in which

knowledge is actively built up by the cognising subject, that is, by the individual mind

to serve the organisation of internal and external reality (Talja, Tuominen and

Savolainen, 2005, p. 81).

I agree with Talja, Tuominen and Savolainen that it is unclear what the cognitive view stands for

because it seems not to be a consistent position. Before 1991 the cognitive view did in my opinion

represent cognitivism and the attempt to draw analogies between human information processing and

computing and to provide cognitive models for information transfer such as Belkin’s (1984)

MONSTRAT, Ingwersen’s MEDIATOR6 Later on Ingwersen (1992) made a distinction between

cognitivism and his own view, labelled ‘the cognitive view’ (probably due to criticism raised by

Hjørland, 1991). And later on again Ingwersen (1996) suggested a “holistic cognitive framework

for IR”. In his 1992 monograph, Ingwersen (p. 157) saw the cognitive view as a synthesis between

6 Also the fact that the textbook Human Information Processing (Lindsay and Norman, 1977) was chosen by Ingwersen

as one of the texts for the first master’s degree of education at the Royal School of Library and Information Science,

Denmark (RSLIS) in 1990 is also an indication of his connection to cognitivism.

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user-oriented approaches and the “traditional approach” and wrote: “The transformation from the

user-oriented and the traditional approaches into a cognitive one happens when IR research comes

to have each other’s isolated models in mind.” In Ingwersen and Järvelin (2005, 191), however,

user-oriented and cognitive views seem no longer to be separated. Here, the authors “[discuss] the

development of cognitive and user-oriented research from the 1970s and onwards under one

umbrella” and state that “the cognitive approach to IR could briefly be characterized as user- and

intermediary-oriented.” I interpret this—in line with other writings—as a tendency to give up the

cognitive approach as differentiated from user-based approaches.

The cognitive view in 2005 now claim to have turned from an individualist to a social perspective:

The present book … reflects a further development of the cognitive viewpoint … by

providing a contextual holistic perspective. The quite individualistic perspective laid

down in the former monograph [Ingwersen, 1992] is hence expanded into a social

stance including generation, searching and use of information” (Ingwersen and Järvelin,

2005, p. vii).

Although the cognitive view started as a reaction to the systems-oriented view (including IR

research and bibliometrics), the latter seems to be the approach that Ingwersen has mostly later

turned towards. “The cognitive view” in Ingwersen’s research seems therefore to have missed its

characteristic as a distinguishable approach, while other researchers seems to continue the original

cognitivist profile (e.g., Jörgensen, 2003; Todd, 2005; Zhang, Liu, and Belkin, in press). Therefore,

the cognitive view may not really be considered a unified theory or tradition.

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Of this reason the question of whether or not cognitivism in information science is related to the

constructivist position of Jean Piaget and others, as suggested by Talja, Tuominen and Savolainen

(2005) cannot be answered with yes or no, but only be answered by analyzing specific suggestions

that have been put forward. Belkin’s ASK hypothesis (Belkin, 2005), for example, should it be

considered constructivist rather than cognitive? We shall not answer that question here, because

both views share an individualist approach, which I find problematic. It is also outside the scope of

this paper to provide introductions to and discussions of theoretical positions such as

constructivism, constructionism, discourse analysis etc. Many of the assumptions of the cognitive

view turn out to be problematic; rather than openly recognize or debate such problems, the strategy

of some cognitivist researchers seems to be to try to make the label fit whatever approach seemed to

be proposed in the community of information science.

Tefko Saracevic wrote about two traditions of research in information retrieval: a systems-centered

tradition (in computer science) and a user-centered tradition (in information science):

The split is not only conceptual, looking very differently at the same process, but also

organizational. The systems centered side is now mostly concentrated in the Special

Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR) of the Association for Computing

Machinery (ACM), while the user-centered cluster congregates around the American

Society for Information Science (ASIS). Each has its own communication outlets—

journals, proceedings, and conferences. There is less and less overlap of authors and

works between the two outlets. We have two camps, two islands, with, unfortunately,

relatively little traffic in-between. (Saracevic, 1999, p. 1057).

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In this quote Saracevic assumes that the research on IR taking place in information science (the

user-centered tradition) has something important to offer. However, a much more pessimistic

interpretation was put forward by Wersig:

Information science has not reached a stage of development where it relies on a

sufficiently sound theoretical and methodological base to be accepted at least as an

important field of study. It is still looking for its identity (Vakkari and Cronin, 1992)

and one of the reasons is that its representatives have never been able to demonstrate

that they are pursuing something really different from computer science, due to the

strong retrieval component, which remains one of the main features of recent

information science (Wersig, 2003, p. 314).

Today we all know that IT research in computer science has produced important tools such as

Internet search engines. However, in the period dominated by the cognitive view, the field ‘has not

reached a stage of development where it relies on a sufficiently sound theoretical and

methodological base to be accepted at least as an important field of study’ (Wersig, 2003, p. 314). If

this is true (as I believe it is), it is indeed a serious situation that demands a reconsideration of the

theoretical basis of the field.

Sanna Talja’s view in the following quotation corresponds to my own evaluation of cognitivism and

the cognitive view in information science:

It is widely recognized that both individual information needs and institutional

information access are socially conditioned. However, conducting information seeking

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research on a macro-sociological level has turned out to be difficult within the cognitive

viewpoint, since it is basically a theory of how individuals process information. The

cognitive viewpoint offers no concrete and obvious solutions to the question of how to

conceptualize and study the socio-cultural context of information processes (Talja,

1997).

The criticism of the cognitive view in information science is thus strong, and its influence seems to

be declining7. What replaces it?

6. The diversification of viewpoints

Information science seems today to be in an extremely diversified and fragmented theoretical

position. There are many indication of this. Marcia Bates’ (2005, p. 10-14) overview of

metatheories in the field briefly presents thirteen different approaches:

(1) A historical approach

(2) A constructivist approach

(3) A constructionist or discourse-analytic approach

(4) A philosophical-analytical approach

(5) A critical theory approach

(6) An ethnographic approach

7 It should be noted, however, that some tendencies in information technology seems to be based on theoretical

assumptions which have resembles with the cognitive view, for example: The new tendency in search engines

personalization search results (cf., Pariser, 2011) and the application of ‘big data’ in learning environments, allowing

computers to diagnose learning styles and difficulties and suggest solutions based on comparing the individual user’s

pattern with patterns derived from huge set of users.

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(7) A socio-cognitive approach

(8) A cognitive approach

(9) A bibliometric approach

(10) A physical approach [which Bates exemplify with Shannon’s information theory]

(11) An engineering approach

(12) A user-centered design approach

(13) An evolutionary approach.

We cannot in this paper present each of these 13 perspectives. Bates’ own descriptions are very

short and catalog-like8.

The situation is, however, even more fragmented than these 13 different approaches suggest. Fisher,

Erdelez and McKechnie (2005) have provided an introduction to ‘theories of information behavior’.

It describes 72 ‘theories’. However, it is arguable whether all 72 are really theories of LIS? Some

appear to be theories from other disciplines and others appear to be subfields rather than theories.

Also, many theories are missing (e.g. information theory itself, quantum theory, (cf., Bawden,

Robinson and Siddiqui in press) and evidence based library and information practice (cf., Booth and

Brice, 2004)). This means that in spite of the broad coverage the book is not suitable for providing

an overview of all the theories in information science. The number (72) indicates that LIS has

become very fragmented: there are few overall views, but extremely many isolated and fragmented

proposals.

8 Unfortunately, Bates did not chose to present these approaches in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences

(Bates and Maack, eds., 2010). In this work, there is an entry about information theory (Kantor, 2010) but that does not

relate Shannon’s theory to the physical approach. Also, it did not consider information theory to be an approach in LIS

today.

34

A third example is Leckie, Given and Buschman’s (2010) Critical Theory for Library and

Information Science, which contains introductions to 26 ‘critical theorists’ presented in 23 chapters.

A fourth example is Arnold (2013), an edited book published in the series Routledge Studies in

Library and Information Science about Traditions of systems theory: Major figures and

contemporary developments. There are no authors from LIS among the authors or editor, there is no

chapter relating systems theory to information science, and the literature about systems theory from

our field is not cited. We do have systems theory in information science and people believing in its

fruitfulness. But these voices tend to disappear in the overwhelming number of other voices and of

voices like Arnold (2013) in which one would expect them to be present.

These four examples do not overlap much, and there is no sign that they together cover all the

approaches, or even most of the approaches which have been put forward in the literature, as a little

browsing easily produces many other theories. Thus, many theories may be considered to be ‘a

flash in the pan’. Howard D White expressed a similar concern:

I see the field of library and information science (L&IS) as highly centrifugal and

greatly in need of high-quality syntheses. Library and information science has always

been easy to enter by persons trained in other disciplines, particularly if they bring

quantitative skills. The pattern has been many fresh starts by new entrants rather than

strong cumulation. Nor is there full agreement as to which work is paradigmatic.

Therefore, I would give warm encouragement to writers who show a talent for creative

integration and criticism of ideas already embodied in the literature. Their efforts should

35

indeed go into reading and organizing existing claims, rather than gathering new data

(White, 1999, p. 1052).

This fragmented state of the field may also be related to the high level of uncited papers in the field:

Schwartz (1997) found that 72% of the articles published in library and information science are

uncited within five years of publication.

Under the heading ‘The diversification of viewpoints’ Wersig wrote:

At the beginning of the 1970s, when information science started to establish itself, it

was faced with the problem that while nearly everybody used the term information,

nearly everybody meant something different by it. The problem was complicated by the

fact that most of the users of the term thought that everybody else would understand and

therefore they very often did not define which kind of meaning they had in mind

(Wersig, 2003, p. 312).

Wersig here echoes Machlup and Mansfield's suggestion that information science is ‘a rather

shapeless assemblage of chunks picked from a variety of disciplines that happen to talk about

information in one of its many meanings’ (Machlup and Mansfield, 1983, p. 22). Thus, one major

cause of the fragmented cognition of the field is that the term ‘information’ is used in many fields

and that anyone from any perspective feels free to consider himself or herself a part of information

science without seriously relating to discourses that have taken place or are taking place in the

institutionalized field of information science. Another major cause is the practicalist influence,

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which tends to reduce information specialists to people with ‘how-to’ knowledge about certain

systems or information sources. As expressed by Buckland:

One might have thought that, for so important a field, a general introduction would be

easily written and redundant. This is not the case. Each different type of information

system (online databases, libraries, etc.) has a massive and largely separate literature.

Attention is almost always limited to one type of information system, is restricted by

technology, usually to computer-based information systems, or is focused on one

function, such as retrieval, disregarding the broader context. What is published is

overwhelmingly specialized, technical, ‘how-to’ writing with localized terminology and

definitions. Writings on theory are usually very narrowly focused on logic, probability,

and physical signals. This diversity has been compounded by confusion arising from

inadequate recognition that the word information is used by different people to denote

different things. (Buckland, 1991a, p. xiii).

I consider all these examples as indicating a serious condition in information science. Is it necessary

to argue why? Can the opposite view: that such plurality is a good thing, be claimed with equal

right? I do not think so. I would use the metaphor of a badly managed chatroom in which all

participants are speaking in the mouth of each other with first listening to what has already been

said. An argument for such pluralism has forgotten that the goal of a scholarly field is to provide

theoretical clarity and that such a clarification is a collective responsibility. The accumulated

knowledge of a field in its published literature represent much of its heritage and thus what we and

our students are supposed to live by. Therefore it should be carefully nursed.

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At the present LIS seems not to be in a process where the relative fruitfulness and failures of

different approaches are clarified over time. People who are interested in a given approach mostly

fail to consider their own view in relation to other views, and they also mostly fail to present their

view in relation to the kinds of problems information science is trying to solve.

7. Too much theory?

“I consider myself a theorist. That is, my inclination is to theoretical argument, to achieving theoretical understanding,

in information retrieval as in other realms” Robertson (2000).

We have already considered Melvil Dewey and what we termed practicalism, an attempt to improve

practice without deeper scholarly involvement. From the point of view of a research based field, it

is disappointing that his DDC system today is the most used library classification in the world and

that other systems, based on research, such as the Bliss Bibliographical Classification 2nd edition

have not been able to gain foothold. Of course research and theories should make a difference, they

are not developed just out of some interest in research and theory for its own sake.

It is important to consider that much academic knowledge is not just explicit theory, but also, for

example, procedural knowledge. Academics in languages are, for example, supposed to master the

language, not just know theories of it. Information specialists are supposed to be able to use

bibliographic databases professionally and master specific standards (e.g. metadata standards) etc.

Theoretical studies and such practical issues should support each other. It should also be considered

that theoretical knowledge may is often built into practical systems, and when you learn to use such

systems, you learn implicit about the theoretical knowledge on which they are based.

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In the following quote Stephen Robertson makes a distinction between theory-driven versus

pragmatic driven information science:

“I have to admit that the field of information retrieval in which I have chosen to be a

theorist is not a very theoretical one. This is true in two senses: in a negative sense,

there are few strong theories in IR, and certainly no overall theory of IR, to which one

might appeal to solve all difficulties. In a positive sense, the field is very strongly

pragmatic: it is driven by practical problems and considerations and evaluated by

practical criteria. Actually, the pragma of IR comes in two distinct forms. On the one

hand, we have commercial pragmatism: IR, systems and services operate in the

marketplace, and stand or fall by market forces - customer satisfaction, willingness to

pay, competition etc. On the other hand, we have technological pragmatism: we design

systems to perform certain tasks, and provided we have the ways and means to measure

success or failure in the performance of these tasks, then we can try out mechanisms and

techniques to our heart's content, selecting those that help in the pursuit of performance,

and rejecting those that do not. Why they work or do not work is a secondary

consideration” (Robertson, 2000, p. 1-2).

That there are “few strong theories in IR, and certainly no overall theory of IR” is in my view

something like an integration of social epistemological, semiotics, activity theory9 and domain

analysis might contribute to develop (or in short: a point of departure in a social and cultural

perspective). We should be aware, however, that such a strong theory may have to be modified by a

large number of narrower theories, such as theories about specific languages (such as Swedish, cf.

9 See Bazerman (2012) and Hjørland (2002) as examples of applying activity theory as a basic approach toinformation science.

39

Hedlund, Pirkola and Järvelin, 2001), genres, domains etc. In other words, we should not in

beforehand assume too universal theories. The great success of classical IR-approaches may be seen

as easy pickings due to the establishing of huge databases (this said without disrespect for the

highly qualified work done in the field). To improve things from here may involve more specific

solutions based on a deep understanding of language, knowledge, genres etc.

Also, I do not see an opposition between theories versus pragma. The purpose of theories is to be

practical: “there is nothing as practical as a good theory” (Lewin 1943:35). A given theory may, for

example, say how best to utilize a given technology.

Robertson specifies the kind of theory he is skeptical about:

Well, we have cognitive science, and linguistics, and epistemology or ontology, and

probability and statistics, and probably other things. There is some tendency to regard

these as alternative ways of looking at IR, but of course they are really complementary.

And their complementarity resides precisely in the combination of low-level logic and

experience. It seems unlikely that we can find a Grand Theory that will tell us exactly

when we should be worrying about the linguistics and when, by contrast, we should

take the linguistic entities we have identified at their face-value and treat them as

statistical clues. I'm not claiming that such a theory is impossible - just that it's a tall

order.

This is not at all to say that the search for theory is futile - far from it. I believe that the

models we have at present can indeed be extended, by theoretical argument as well as

by both kinds of pragmatism, to cover more ground than they do at present and to be

40

more useful as tools. But when I read a paper (as one does, occasionally) which seems

to make a claim to represent a Grand Theory, then I shall continue to take it with a

pinch of salt. And if I myself should ever seem to make such a claim, you have my full

permission, nay encouragement, to do the same to me! (Robertson, 2000, p. 9-10).

My expectation are more favorable in relation to “Grand theory” compared to the view here

expressed by Robertson, but I admit the task is “a tall order”. I also share his view we often

encounter such grand theories without proper examination of their fruitfulness to the tasks they are

supposed to solve. As I concluded elsewhere:

Buckland (2012:5) has stated that Brier’s (2008) cybersemiotics provides a coherent

unifying theory for an existing field, namely LIS. However, this has to be shown by

concrete studies, which have hitherto not been carried out by Buckland, Brier, or

anybody else. Bawden and Robinson, in a similar way, have great expectations for the

philosophy of information developed by Luciano Floridi, but this philosophy has not

hitherto been applied in the specific areas of LIS described in the rest of their book. We

need to go from the concrete to the abstract and back again. This is the most urgent task

for research in LIS. (Hjørland, 2013c, pp. 230-231).

The answer to the question in the section headline is therefore: We may have too many theoretical

suggestions, which are proposed without proper examination. All too often it seems to be

considered legitimate to take a theory from another field, introduce it and claim that it might be

relevant. A presupposition seems to be that there are enough qualified people in the field to do the

rest of the job: Prove the relevance of the theory (what I consider to be a wrong assumption: The

41

burden of proof is on those who suggest a new theory). It is important that theoretical suggestions

are compared with other theoretical suggestions and that there is a strong dialectics between theory

and practice.

8. What influences the theoretical development of information science?

At first sight, information science does not seem to be much driven by theory. It seems to be much

more driven by external factors such as new technologies and overall trends in society. When a new

information technology such as online databases, CD-ROMs, the Internet, social media and so on

arises, it is followed by new research fields in information science. We need therefore to consider

two main sets of factors influencing the development of science (and correspondently two

tendencies in the history of science to explain the development of science): One set are the internal

factors in science (one discovery leads to new discoveries, science is seen as independent and

relatively cumulative10). Another set of factors are external to science itself (such as new

technologies, the people attracted to the field or new developments in philosophy. Science is here

understood as consisting of relatively more breaks and new approaches). In order to consider the

development of approaches to information science we may need to consider a range of mutually

interacting external and internal developments:

A. Overall developments in society

We speak about the ‘information society’ and the ‘knowledge society’, implying the

growing importance of information and knowledge and of associated technologies and

studies of information and knowledge production, communication and use.

10 Kuhn’s (1962) theory of science suggested, however, that science is not cumulative (but have revolutions), although it

represents an internalist view of science.

42

The increasing commercialization (both research itself, of research structures such as

journals and libraries, of educational institutions etc.). Concepts such as the Triple Helix

(referring to the increasing interdependency between industries, universities and

governments) are important (see Hessels and van Lente, 2008).

A third important factor is internationalization.

These overall factors influence information science and the way researchers in this field look at

their own field.

B. Technological developments

Most important here is the development from printed media to digital media, the challenges

traditional libraries and other memory institutions face, and the challenges librarians face from

computer scientists, the plurality of new information fields and professions and so on.

C. Media and communication developments

Media development is of course also the above mentioned development in the direction of digital

media, but it is broader and involves the development of symbolic systems, including languages,

and of communication systems considered from overall perspectives such as those offered by

developments in science, commerce, education, the development of open access and so on (See the

UNISIST model in Fjordback Søndergaard, Andersen and Hjørland, 2003).

D. Developments in libraries, archives, museums and databases

Developments in research libraries and other memory institutions include library automation,

library shortcut and the changing economic and political conditions under which such institutions

have to function; developments in the information professions are also important.

43

E. Theoretical developments Interdisciplinary developments

Developments from logical positivism to alternatives such as paradigm theory, neo-

pragmatism, semiotics and towards a Grand theory.

Developments internal to information science/LIS. Developments of theory within LIS

include research traditions, teaching traditions, theories and ‘paradigms’. Also, there are

debates about whether LIS should be considered a scientific field, a technological field, a

part of computer science, of the cognitive sciences, of the cultural sciences, of science

studies and whether or not it should be considered an independent field. In an ideal world

theories and approaches in information sciences should be examined and fruitful theories

should be strengthened, whereas unfruitful theories should be discarded. Correspondingly,

the approaches that have survived should be those with the strongest arguments in favor of

them; however, this does not seem to be the case in reality.

In order to develop fruitful theories science must consider epistemology. As Albert Einstein wrote:

The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of a noteworthy kind. They

are dependent upon each other.

Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without

epistemology is – insofar as it is thinkable at all – primitive and muddled (Einstein,

1949, p. 683).

It is important to consider and evaluate the different theories and traditions in the field. In this

connection it is also important consider how different traditions are related to overall philosophical

44

perspectives, which practical problems information specialists are sufficiently educated to work

with and the dialectical relations between theory and practice.

Table 1 shows different layers of mutual interactions between philosophy, subject theory,

interdisciplinary theories and information practices. The views expressed in the present article may

be considered an emphasis on a kind of Grand theory (cf., Skinner, 1985); they are opposed to the

view that good research can be done without considering the theoretical and philosophical issues. p

 Table 1. Information science’s theories and traditions.

General

philosophica

l level

How are great thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Thomas Kuhn, René Descartes and Hans-

Georg Gadamer relevant to information science?

Meta-level/

paradigms:

Information

sciences’

paradigms

and

traditions

LIS approaches include facet analysis, user-based views

and cognitive views, bibliometric views, systems-

oriented views, domain-oriented views, critical

approaches etc. (see, for example, Bates (2005), Ellis

(1992, a, b), Fisher, Erdelez and McKechnie, 2005;

Fuchs (2011), Hjørland (2013a+b+e).

General social

science/humanities theory

used in information science

e.g. behaviourism, cognitivism,

activity theory, genre theory,

structuralism,

semiotics, new public management

…

Theory level The theory level is the level of the specific assumptions which may guide practitioners’

decisions. For example: ‘users’ utilization of a library is inversely correlated with distance to

the library’; ‘users’ preferences are based on their individual personalities; ‘users preferences are

formed by market forces’; ‘the most cited documents are the best documents’; ‘the most cited

documents reflect the dominant ideology’ etc.

Each theory is related to a metatheory, which is again related to the general philosophical

level.

45

Application

level

(practical

activities

done by

information

specialists)

Helping users search for documents, information, knowledge and art.

Designing and evaluating search systems, classifications, ontologies and so on.

Cataloguing, classifying, indexing and annotating documents.

Building and managing collections/Cultural Resource Management

….

Problems at the application levels are connected to the theories that information professionals

have (and which have influenced their tools, e.g. classification systems), which are again

connected to metatheories and again in turn associated with the general philosophical level.

(However, a given paradigm may not influence all subdisciplines; each subfield may – so to

speak – live its own life, cf. Spear, 2007.)

Problems at the application levels are connected to the theories that information professionals have

(and which have influenced their tools, e.g. classification systems), which are again connected to

metatheories and again in turn associated with the general philosophical level11.

9. A social and cultural turn in information science?

RSLIS has in last five years had a goal of developing information science ‘in interplay with issues

such as the contextual, social, philosophical or cultural perspectives’. This goal is expressed, for

example, in announcements about the position of Professors at RSLIS12. This expressed goal of a

leading international information science institution is one (albeit a small) indication of a social and

cultural turn in information science. Other indications are views expressed by leading scholars in

the field such as Blaise Cronin (2008) who wrote about the ‘sociological turn in information

science’ while Michael Buckland (2012, p. 1) wrote that ‘…information science is […] a form of

11 However, a given paradigm may not influence all subdisciplines; each subfield may – so to speak – live its own life,

cf. Spear, 2007.

12 The quote is from a job announcement dated 8 April 2011.

46

cultural engagement’. The above mentioned indications and views do not in themselves provide

evidence of any social and cultural turn in the field. It is probably also the case that some (many?)

colleagues and scholars in the fields do not share this view (at least for now).

The idea of relating information science to cultural studies is one in a long range of ideas relating IS

to other fields such as computer science, management studies, cognitive science, and many other

fields. To claim that field A is related to field B is a hypothesis that has to be examined. What really

counts, of course, are strong arguments that such a relation will enable the most fruitful

development of the field, and in this regard also demonstrate the limitations of earlier approaches in

the field such as information theory and the cognitive view. Arguments for a social and cultural turn

may come from inside information science as well as from developments in other fields such as

psychology, linguistics, philosophy and many others. One such argument is, for example, for

methodological holism, about which cultural psychologist Carl Ratner wrote:

Individualism says that the individual element is an independent entity that has self-

contained properties, although of course it draws on resources around it. An example is

the popular idea that the individual is responsible for his or her own fate. One's success

and failure depend ultimately on how hard one works. Holism says that the individual

element is inextricably tied to other individuals. Individuals are interdependent, and

they are internally related in the sense that each is imbued with and constituted by the

qualities of others. An example is a child in a family. The child's psychology depends

utterly on the way he or she is treated. Any intrinsic tendencies are modulated and

mediated by experience. From this perspective, the child is not entirely responsible for

his or her behavior (Ratner, 2008), p. 514).

47

Ratner further shows how holism is related to cultural studies. Ratner’s examples are all about

human beings as elements, but this may of course be extended to ‘information’ and ‘documents’. I

believe there is a great opportunity to develop information science from such a holistic perspective.

Computer science has so far dominated the field of information retrieval mostly based on an

atomistic/individualistic frame of reference (e.g. by applying ‘bag-of-words’ approaches). Perhaps

this line of research has exhausted most of its potential? Recently, it has been claimed that there

seems to be no overall progress in the field of IR (Armstrong, Moat, Webber and Zobel, 2009). If

this is true, information science may have important perspectives to contribute, which may be

related to methodological holism and to social and cultural perspectives that, as we have seen, have

lain dormant in the traditions of LIS. From a social and cultural perspective, documents (or

‘information’) are always understood as being produced within a particular tradition, which

contains important clues to its meaning and potential use. In Hjørland (2013a) I argued that

bibliometrics may be able to provide such a historicist perspective.

Finally, we shall return to social epistemology. The term is central because information science is

about communication of knowledge (and thus social) and about criteria of what counts as

knowledge (hence epistemology). There are today at least four versions of social epistemology: (1)

an approach from analytic philosophy in which Alvin Goldman is a leading representative (2) a

critical approach developed by Steve Fuller (see Collin, 2013, for an introduction and comparison

of these two versions) (3) a version developed by information scientist Rafael Capurro on the basis

of hermeneutics (see Capurro and Holgate, 2011) and (4) the approach developed by Thomas Kuhn

(see Wray, 2011). We shall here shortly consider Kuhn’s version.

48

According to Kuhn, we do not conceive the world directly, but – as Kant proposed – through lenses

of the mind. However, contrary to Kant, these lenses are not hard-wired into our brain, but are

changing with cultures and scientific paradigms:

Kuhn maintained that his view was Kantian but “with categories of the mind which

could change with time as the accommodation of language and experience proceeded”

(Kuhn 1979, 418-419) (Andersen, 2012, p. 188).

What are the implications of this view for information science? The first thing is that we cannot

study “information” or “users” directly, we always have to consider the cultural or theoretical

perspective from which observations are made and research is done (and technology is developed).

There is no “view from nowhere” to use Thomas Nagel’s (1986) expression.

More directly, the subjectivity of relevance judgments by experts and by users may partly be

explained by different “paradigms”. Understood in this way, we have a third position between

expert evaluations and user evaluations: We have expert evaluations and user evaluations made in

some specific context influenced more or less by different theories and “paradigms”. We should not

just ask: Is X relevant? We should ask: From which perspective is X relevant (and which interests

does X support?).

10. Conclusion

It matters how the history of a scholarly domain is depicted. As Joseph Spear wrote in an analysis

of another field:

49

The problem, of course, is that the outcome of this story has real and important

implications for the distribution of organizational resources. If indeed every dean, every

granting agency, and every department head “knows” that there has been a cognitive

revolution […], then where does that leave the claims of those who do not identify

themselves with cognitive psychology […]? There is much at stake in how the history

of psychology [and information science] is told. (Spear, 2007, p. 377)13

In this paper, the history of information science is depicted from the subjective perspective of the

author – in the more traditional way of scholarly history writing. But would it be better to have

more “objective” descriptions such as, for example, the content analysis made by Tuomaala,

Järvelin and Vakkari (2014) or the many bibliometric maps that have been produced of information

science such as the recent study by Zhao and Strotmann (2014)?

I’ll argue that this is not the case. The main argument is that such studies provides very different

maps of information science (compare, for example, Tuomaala, Järvelin and Vakkari, 2014, and

Zhao and Strotmann, 2014). They provide very different pictures of information science because

they are very vulnerable to which methods are used and which journals have been selected as the

basis for an operational definition of information science. As formerly stated:

One issue that is particularly important in this respect is the selection of the documents

on which the bibliometric maps are based. Imagine that we are going to create a map of

LIS. As Åström (2002) showed, former maps, such as that of White and McCain

(1998), seem to have a bias towards information science. In order to provide a better

13 Spears paper is a good example, of how a critical involvement in a domain may produce better, more objective

depictions of a field.

50

alternative, Åström also included more library-oriented journals in his study. However,

there is no objective criterion for judging which documents best represent LIS, and any

selected set of journals can always be shown to have a bias in some direction or

another.

Both White and McCain (1998) and Åström (2002) were explicit about which journals

they used in their studies. However, the claim put forward here is that they did not make

explicit arguments for how the journals were selected in relation to their conception of

the field. It is as if the authors’ view of what information science is and should be is

considered “obvious” or of no consequence. As a result, their selection of journals is not

based on arguments about which aspects of information science are being favored and

which are being suppressed. (Hjørland, 2013a, p. 1322)

Tuomaala, Järvelin and Vakkari (2014) based their study on “a purposive selection … of core

journals” with library and information science. However, to consider the full content of a given

journal, such as Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), a

representation of a LIS is problematic, because, as demonstrated by Chua and Yang (2008), “Top

authors [in JASIST] have grown in diversity from those being affiliated predominantly with

library/information-related departments to include those from information systems management,

information technology, business, and the humanities.” Therefore, bibliometric maps based on

JASIST cannot simply be taken to represent the library/information field without further

examination.

In spite of its claim to investigate “what approaches, research strategies, and methods have been

applied during the span of time under review” Tuomaala, Järvelin and Vakkari (2014) can neither

51

confirm nor disconfirm that a social and cultural turn is taking place in information science. Their

methodology seems not fit to describe changes at the metatheoretical level.

We have seen that Saracevic distinguished two traditions of research in IR: a systems-centered

tradition (in computer science) and a user-centered tradition (in information science). By not

considering such distinctions Tuomaala, Järvelin and Vakkari (2014) is unable to illuminate

whether important parts of IR-research has immigrated from LIS to computer science. We have a

kind of hermeneutic circle: How can we identify a field by a set of journals, a set of departments, a

set of scholars, etc., unless we already know the field? And how can we know the field unless we

know its journals, its research institutions, and its leading scholars? The answer is that it requires an

iterative process. And such arguments, I claim, shows that “subjective” histories of science like the

one presented in this paper is a prerequisite for more quantitative studies.

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