Brian Vickery and the foundations of information science

The paper examines B.C. Vickery's contributions to the continuing debate on the nature of the information sciences as academic disciplines and domains of professional practice, focusing on ten main topics: what is information science; information science as a field of study; the core of information science; information science and other disciplines; cognate information disciplines; information science: theory and practice; education for information science; the importance of the user; the place of knowledge organisation; and information science: looking backward and forward. Introduction The purpose of this paper is to examine Brian Vickery's contributions to the continuing debate on the nature of the information sciences, as academic disciplines and domains of professional practice. The analysis focuses on Vickery's developing ideas of the unique contributions of, and distinct 'academic territory' for, information science, with the organisation of information for retrieval, and the technology-invariant features of human information-related behaviour at its core. It also examines his constant vision expressed in the title of his well-known textbook that information science is both theory and practice, and the two are inter-twined and must learn from and reinforce each other. It is not a comprehensive analysis of his writings, still less of his influence; it is based on material published between 1970 and 2009, in readily available sources. The paper is based around ten main topics or issues:  what is information science  information science as a field of study  the core of information science  information science and other disciplines  cognate information disciplines  information science: theory and practice  education for information science  the importance of the user  the place of knowledge organisation  information science: looking backward and forward. Extensive quotations from Vickery's work have been used as the basis for the presentation. Vickery generally expressed his views succinctly and with clarity, and, so far as possible, we have tried to let him speak for himself.