The History and Historiography of Information Science: Some Reflections

-The first part of this paper examines some of the difficulties for the historian of information science that arise from the lack of agreement as to what precisely constitutes information science and from its commonly accepted interdisciplinary nature. It examines in this connection Machlup and Mansfield's ideas about a "narrow" information science and information science as a composite of disciplinary chunks. Regardless of these issues, it demonstrates that the history of information science is gaining an identity both bibliographically and socially. The second part of the paper suggests that as a condition of their organization, reproduction, and control all societies have evolved their own distinctive ways of managing information. Ultimately, then, the history of information science can be considered to extend far beyond the last 50 years where attention is commonly focused. Drawing on Brandel's notions, dur~e Iongue, moyenne and courte, the paper suggests an approach to periodicity that provides a new perspective for the history information science. The paper also introduces the notions of synchrony and diachrony to suggest other approaches to the historical study of aspects of information science. The paper concludes that the history of information science is an historical interdiscipline and those interested in it need to draw on a range of related historical studies such as the history of science and technology, the history of printing and publishing, and the history of information institutions such as libraries, archives and museums. A BACKGROUND OF PROBLEMS OF DEFINITION AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY One of the most serious problems confronting the historian of information science is knowing what it is that he or she is studying. Is information a process or a product? Is it text or document, the content of verbal communication, an expression of meaning, a statistical phenomenon of signal transmission, the processes of symbol representation and manipulation by electronic machines, biophysical activity of the brain, a matter of genetic or biochemical structures and processes? The historian of established or traditional scientific disciplines such as astronomy, of aspects of the man-made material world such as railways or music, of abstract concepts or ideas like progress or human rights, have the touchstone of something that has become conceptually recognizable, identifiable, delimitable and relatively stable. They have a history! There is a linguistic pot for each of them, the shape and contents of which have changed and will continue to change with the passage of time and the reconstitutive and reconstructive activities of generations of theorists and historians. But whatever the changes, at least the pot is understood still to be there, a product of all of its previous avatars. There is a fundamental problem for some in the use of the word "science" in this connection. Is information science really a "science"? How are we to assimilate into it the notion of technological development that is so striking a part of what we casually designate information science? How are we to relate the professional practice or service elements to the science? Is there an information professional whose work is at once supported by, as it helps to determine, the research and development agenda of an information science? Is it appropriate to deal with the problem as Machlup and Mansfield have done essentially by dismissing it, as we have done with respect to library science also (Machlup & Mansfield, 1983; Rayward 1983a)? Has the kind of narrow understanding of what constitutes science and a lack of awareness of the potential interrelationships of science and technology, that Buckland in his article in this issue of