Information science is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information. Practitioners within and outside the field study the application and the usage of knowledge in organizations in addition to the interaction between people, organizations, and any existing information systems with the aim of creating, replacing, improving, or understanding the information systems.
A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users.
Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan was a librarian and mathematician from India. His most notable contributions to the field were his five laws of library science and the development of the first major faceted classification system, the colon classification. He is considered to be the father of library science, documentation, and information science in India and is widely known throughout the rest of the world for his fundamental thinking in the field. His birthday is observed every year as National Librarian Day in India.
Michael Gorman is a British-born librarian, library scholar and editor/writer on library issues noted for his traditional views. During his tenure as president of the American Library Association (ALA), he was vocal in his opinions on a range of subjects, notably technology and education. He currently lives in the Chicago area with his wife, Anne Reuland, an academic administrator at Loyola University.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to library and information science:
Jesse Hauk Shera was an American librarian and information scientist who pioneered the use of information technology in libraries and played a role in the expansion of its use in other areas throughout the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
Education for librarianship, including for paraprofessional library workers, varies around the world, and has changed over time. In recent decades, many institutions offering librarianship education have changed their names to reflect the shift from print media to electronic media, and to information contained outside of traditional libraries. Some call themselves schools of library and information science, or have dropped the word "library" altogether.
Music librarianship is the area of librarianship that pertains to music collections and their development, cataloging, preservation and maintenance, as well as reference issues connected with musical works and music literature. Music librarians often have degrees in both music and librarianship. Music librarians deal with standard librarianship duties such as cataloging and reference, which become more complicated when music scores and recordings are involved. Therefore, music librarians generally read music and have at least a basic understanding of both music theory and music history to aid in their duties.
Library and Information Science (LIS) are two interconnected disciplines that deal with information management. This includes organization, access, collection, and regulation of information, both in physical and digital forms.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to information science:
William Warner Bishop was an American librarian who is credited and remembered for his work organizing and cataloging the Vatican Archives, his time served working with the American Library Association, as well as his support of academic libraries. He has the honor of being named one of the most influential librarians in American history.
Frederick Wilfrid ("Wilf") Lancaster was a British-American information scientist. He immigrated to the US in 1959 and worked as information specialist for the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1965 to 1968. He was a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana, from 1972 to 1992 and professor emeritus from 1992 to 2013. He continued as an honored scholar after retirement speaking on the evolution of librarianship in the 20th and 21st century.
A library and information scientist, also known as a library scholar, is a researcher or academic who specializes in the field of library and information science and often participates in scholarly writing about and related to library and information science. A library and information scientist is neither limited to any one subfield of library and information science nor any one particular type of library. These scientists come from all information-related sectors including library and book history.
Jack Mills was a British librarian and classification researcher, who worked for more than sixty years in the study, teaching, development and promotion of library classification and information retrieval, principally as a major figure in the British school of facet analysis which builds on the traditions of Henry E. Bliss and S.R. Ranganathan.
The University of Chicago Graduate Library School (GLS) was established in 1928 to develop a program for the graduate education of librarians with a focus on research. Housed for a time in the Joseph Regenstein Library, the GLS closed in 1989 when the University decided to promote information studies instead of professional education. GLS faculty were among the most prominent researchers in librarianship in the twentieth century. Alumni of the school have made a great impact on the profession including Hugh Atkinson, Susan Grey Akers, Bernard Berelson, Michèle Cloonan, El Sayed Mahmoud El Sheniti, Eliza Atkins Gleason, Frances E. Henne, Virginia Lacy Jones, Bill Katz Judith Krug, Lowell Martin, Miriam Matthews, Kathleen de la Peña McCook, Errett Weir McDiarmid, Elizabeth Homer Morton, Benjamin E. Powell, W. Boyd Rayward, Charlemae Hill Rollins, Katherine Schipper, Ralph R. Shaw, Spencer Shaw, Frances Lander Spain, Peggy Sullivan, Maurice Tauber and Tsuen-hsuin Tsien.
Ronald E. Day is a librarian and a professor of Information and Library Science at Indiana University in Bloomington where he specializes in research on the culture and history of "information, documentation, knowledge, and communication" in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ronald Day is a significant scholar in the field of library and information science having contributed the first major work on the 20th century French librarian and information scientist Suzanne Briet, known as "Madame Documentation," and publishing more than forty works on the intersection of critical theory and library science. Day is one of the few modern critical theorists in the field of library and information science that foregrounds much of his work in the discipline of rhetoric.
John Y. Cole is an American librarian, historian, and author. He was the founding director of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress and in 2016 became the first official historian of the Library of Congress.
Leonard Montague Harrod was a British librarian and indexer. He was the librarian and the director of the Raffles Library in Singapore, and the Chief Librarian and Curator of Islington Public Libraries.
The Award of Merit is bestowed by the Association for Information Science and Technology. It is an annual prize to an individual for a lifetime of achievement that recognizes sustained contributions to and/or achievements in the field of information science and/or the professions in which it is practiced. The Award of Merit was first given in 1964 to Hans Peter Luhn.
