# library and information science library and information science(s) or studies (lis) is an interdisciplinary field of study that deals generally with organisation access collection and regulation of information whether in physical or digital forms some consider the two original disciplines library science and information science to be separate fields. however it is common today to use the terms synonymously or to drop the term "library" and to speak about information departments or information schools. there have also been attempts to revive the concept of documentation and to speak of library information and documentation studies (or science.) the organisation of information and information resources is one of the fundamental aspects of lis # definition library science (often termed library studies and library economy) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices perspectives and tools of management information technology education and other areas to libraries; the collection organisation preservation and dissemination of information resources; and the political economy of information. martin schrettinger a bavarian librarian coined the discipline within ir work (1808-1828) versuch eines vollständigen lehrbuchs der bibliothek-wissenschaft oder anleitung zur vollkommenen geschäftsführung eines bibliothekars. rather than classifying information based on nature-oriented elements as was previously done in ir bavarian library schrettinger organised books in alphabetical order. the first american school for library science was founded by melvil dewey at columbia university in 1887 historically library science has also included archival science. this includes how information resources are organised to serve the needs of selected user groups how people interact with classification systems and technology how information is acquired evaluated and applied by people in and outside libraries as well as cross-culturally how people are trained and educated for careers in libraries the ethics that guide library service and organisation the legal status of libraries and information resources and the applied science of computer technology used in documentation and records management there is no generally agreed-upon distinction between the terms library science and librarianship. to a certain extent they are interchangeable perhaps differing most significantly in connotation. the term library and information studies (alternatively library and information science) abbreviated as lis is most often used; most librarians consider it as only a terminological variation intended to emphasize the scientific and technical foundations of the subject and its relationship with information science. lis should not be confused with information theory the mathematical study of the concept of information. library philosophy has been contrasted with library science as the study of the aims and justifications of librarianship as opposed to the development and refinement of techniques # education and training academic courses in library science include collection management information systems and technology research methods information literacy cataloging and classification preservation reference statistics and management. library science is constantly evolving incorporating new topics like database management information architecture and information management among others with the mounting acceptance of wikipedia as a valued and reliable reference source many libraries museums and archives have introduced the role of wikipedian in residence. as a result some universities are including coursework relating to wikipedia and knowledge management in ir mlis programs becoming a library assistant does not always need a degree and in some contexts the difference between being a library staff member and a librarian is the level of education. most professional library jobs require a professional degree in library science or equivelent. in the united states and canada the certification usually comes from a master's degree granted by an ala-accredited institution. in australia a number of institutions offer degrees accepted by the alia (australian library and information association.) global standards of accreditation or certification in librarianship have yet to be developed # # united states and canada the master of library science (mlis) is the master's degree that is required for most professional librarian positions in the united states and canada. the mlis is a relatively recent degree; an older and still common degree designation for librarians to acquire is the master of library science (mls) or master of science in library science (msls) degree. according to the american library association (ala) "the master's degree in library and information studies is frequently referred to as the mls; however ala-accredited degrees have various names such as master of arts master of librarianship master of library and information studies or master of science. the degree name is determined by the program. the committee for accreditation evaluates programs based on ir adherence to the standards for accreditation of master's programs in library and information studies not based on the name of the degree # types of librarianship # # public the study of librarianship for public libraries covers issues such as cataloging; collection development for a diverse community; information literacy; readers' advisory; community standards; public services-focused librarianship; serving a diverse community of adults children and teens; intellectual freedom; censorship; and legal and budgeting issues. the public library as a commons or public sphere based on the work of jürgen habermas has become a central metaphor in the 21st century in the united states there are four different types of public libraries: association libraries municipal public libraries school district libraries and special district public libraries. each receives funding through different sources each is established by a different set of voters and not all are subject to municipal civil service governance # # school the study of school librarianship covers library services for children in primary through secondary school. in some regions the local government may have stricter standards for the education and certification of school librarians (who are sometimes considered a special case of teacher) than for other librarians and the educational program will include those local criteria. school librarianship may also include issues of intellectual freedom pedagogy information literacy and how to build a cooperative curriculum with the teaching staff # # academic the study of academic librarianship covers library services for colleges and universities. issues of special importance to the field may include copyright; technology digital libraries and digital repositories; academic freedom; open access to scholarly works; as well as specialised knowledge of subject areas important to the institution and the relevant reference works. librarians often divide focus individually as liaisons on particular schools within a college or university. academic librarians may be subject specific librarians some academic librarians are considered faculty and hold similar academic ranks to those of professors while others are not. in either case the minimal qualification is a master of arts in library studies or a master of arts in library science. some academic libraries may only require a master's degree in a specific academic field or a related field such as educational technology # # archival the study of archives includes the training of archivists librarians specially trained to maintain and build archives of records intended for historical preservation. special issues include physical preservation conservation and restoration of materials and mass deacidification; specialist catalogs; solo work; access; and appraisal. many archivists are also trained historians specializing in the period covered by the archive the archival mission includes three major goals: to identify papers and records with enduring value preserve the identified papers and make the papers available to others. while libraries receive items individually archival items will usually become part of the archive's collection as a cohesive group. major difference in collections is that library collections typically comprise published items (books magazines etc.) while archival collections are usually unpublished works (letters diaries etc..) library collections are created by many individuals as each author and illustrator create ir own publication; in contrast an archive usually collects the records of one person family institution or organisation so the archival items will have fewer sources of authors behavior in an archive differs from behavior in other libraries. in most libraries items are openly available to the public. archival items almost never circulate and someone interested in viewing documents must request them of the archivist and may only be able view them in a closed reading room # # special special libraries are libraries established to meet the highly specialised requirements of professional or business groups. a library is special depending on whether it covers a specialised collection a special subject or a particular group of users or even the type of parent organisation such as medical libraries or law libraries the issues at these libraries are specific to ir industries but may include solo work corporate financing specialised collection development and extensive self-promotion to potential patrons. special librarians have ir own professional organisation the special libraries association (sla) some special libraries such as the cia library may contain classified works. it is a resource to employees of the central intelligence agency containing over 125-000 written materials subscribes to around 1-700 periodicals and had collections in three areas: historical intelligence circulating and reference. in february 1997 three librarians working at the institution spoke to information outlook a publication of the sla revealing that the library had been created in 1947 the importance of the library in disseminating information to employees even with a small staff and how the library organizes its materials # # preservation preservation librarians most often work in academic libraries. ir focus is on the management of preservation activities that seek to maintain access to content within books manuscripts archival materials and other library resources. examples of activities managed by preservation librarians include binding conservation digital and analog reformatting digital preservation and environmental monitoring # history ![[ancientlibraryalex.jpg|300]] the library of alexandria an early library also libraries have existed since library science is a more recent phenomenon as early libraries were managed primarily by academics # # 17th century ![[220px-gabrielnaude.jpg|300]] portrait of gabriel naude author of advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1627) later translated into english in 1661 the earliest text on "library operations" advice on establishing a library was published in 1627 by french librarian and scholar gabriel naude. naude wrote on many subjects including politics religion history and the supernatural. ey put into practice all the ideas put forth in advice when given the opportunity to build and maintain the library of cardinal jules mazarin # # 19th century ![[220px-deweyrelatvindex.png]] martin schrettinger wrote the second textbook (the first in germany) on the subject from 1808 to 1829 some of the main tools used by lis to provide access to the resources originated in 19th century to make information accessible by recording identifying and providing bibliographic control of printed knowledge. the origin for some of these tools were even earlier. in the 17th century during the 'golden age of libraries' publishers and sellers seeking to take advantage of the burgeoning book trade developed descriptive catalogs of ir wares for distribution - a practice was adopted and further extrapolated by many libraries of the time to cover areas like philosophy sciences linguistics and medicine thomas jefferson whose library at monticello consisted of thousands of books devised a classification system inspired by the baconian method which grouped books more or less by subject rather than alphabetically as it was previously done. the jefferson collection provided the start of what became the library of congress the first american school of librarianship opened at columbia university under the leadership of melvil dewey noted for ir 1876 decimal classification on january 5 1887 as the school of library economy. the term library economy was common in the u.s. until 1942 with the term library science- predominant through much of the 20th century # # 20th century later the term was used in the title of s. r. ranganathan's the five laws of library science published in 1931 and in the title of lee pierce butler's 1933 book an introduction to library science (university of chicago press) s. r. ranganathan conceived the five laws of library science and the development of the first major analytical-synthetic classification system the colon classification in the united states lee pierce butler's new approach advocated research using quantitative methods and ideas in the social sciences with the aim of using librarianship to address society's information needs. ey was one of the first faculty at the university of chicago graduate library school which changed the structure and focus of education for librarianship in the twentieth century. this research agenda went against the more procedure-based approach of the "library economy" which was mostly confined to practical problems in the administration of libraries william stetson merrill's a code for classifiers released in several editions from 1914 to 1939 is an example of a more pragmatic approach where arguments stemming from in-depth knowledge about each field of study are employed to recommend a system of classification. while ranganathan's approach was philosophical it was also tied more to the day-to-day business of running a library. a reworking of ranganathan's laws was published in 1995 which removes the constant references to books. michael gorman's our enduring values: librarianship in the 21st century features the eight principles necessary by library professionals and incorporates knowledge and information in all ir forms allowing for digital information to be considered in the english-speaking world the term "library science" seems to have been used for the first time in india in the 1916 book punjab library primer written by asa don dickinson and published by the university of punjab lahore pakistan. this university was the first in asia to begin teaching "library science." the punjab library primer was the first textbook on library science published in english anywhere in the world. the first textbook in the united states was the manual of library economy by james duff brown published in 1903. in 1923 c. c. williamson who was appointed by the carnegie corporation published an assessment of library science education entitled "the williamson report" which designated that universities should provide library science training. this report had a significant impact on library science training and education. library research and practical work in the area of information science have remained largely distinct both in training and in research interests # # from library science to lis by the late 1960s mainly due to the meteoric rise of human computing power and the new academic disciplines formed therefrom academic institutions began to add the term "information science" to ir names. the first school to do this was at the university of pittsburgh in 1964. more schools followed during the 1970s and 1980s and by the 1990s almost all library schools in the usa had added information science to ir names. although there are exceptions similar developments have taken place in other parts of the world. in denmark for example the 'royal school of librarianship' changed its english name to the royal school of library and information science in 1997 # # 21st century the digital age has transformed how information is accessed and retrieved. "the library is now a part of a complex and dynamic educational recreational and informational infrastructure." mobile devices and applications with wireless networking high-speed computers and networks and the computing cloud have deeply impacted and developed information science and information services. the evolution of the library sciences maintains its mission of access equity and community space as well as the new means for information retrieval called information literacy skills. all catalogs databases and a growing number of books are available on the internet. in addition the expanding free access to open-source journals and sources such as wikipedia has fundamentally impacted how information is accessed. information literacy is the ability to "determine the extent of information needed access the needed information effectively and efficiently evaluate information and its sources critically incorporate selected information into one's knowledge base use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose and understand the economic legal and social issues surrounding the use of information and access and use information ethically and legally" # journals (see also list of lis journals in india page category:library science journals and journal citation reports for listing according to impact factor) some core journals in lis are **+** annual review of information science and technology (arist) (1966-2011) **+** el profesional de la información (es) (epi) (1992-) (formerly information world en español) **+** information processing and management **+** information research: an international electronic journal (ir) (1995-) **+** italian journal of library and information studies (jlis.it) **+** journal of documentation (jdoc) (1945-) **+** journal of information science (jis) (1979-) **+** journal of the association for information science and technology (formerly journal of the american society for information science and technology) (jasist) (1950-) **+** knowledge organisation (journal) **+** library literature and information science retrospective **+** library trends (1952-) **+** scientometrics (journal) (1978-) **+** the library quarterly (lq) (1931-) **+** grandhalaya sarvaswam (1915-) important bibliographical databases in lis are among others social sciences citation index and library and information science abstracts # conferences this is a list of some of the major conferences in the field **+** annual meeting of the american society for information science and technology **+** conceptions of library and information science **+** i-schools' iconferences **+** the international federation of library associations and institutions (ifla): world library and information congress **+** african library and information associations and institutions (aflia) conference # subfields information science grew out of documentation science and therefore has a tradition for considering scientific and scholarly communication bibliographic databases subject knowledge and terminology etc an advertisement for a full professor in information science at the royal school of library and information science spring 2011 provides one view of which subdisciplines are well-established: "the research and teaching/supervision must be within some (and at least one) of these well-established information science areas 1. knowledge organisation 2. library studies 3. information architecture 4. information behavior 5. interactive information retrieval 6. information systems 7. scholarly communication 8. digital literacy (cf information literacy) 9. bibliometrics or scientometrics 10. interaction design and user experience" 11. digital library a curriculum study by kajberg & lørring in 2005reported a "degree of overlap of the ten curricular themes with subject areas in the current curricula of responding lis schools" **+** information seeking and information retrieval 100% **+** library management and promotion 96% **+** knowledge management 86% **+** knowledge organisation 82% **+** information literacy and learning 76% **+** library and society in a historical perspective (library history) 66% **+** the information society: barriers to the free access to information 64% **+** cultural heritage and digitisation of the cultural heritage (digital preservation) 62% **+** the library in the multi-cultural information society: international and intercultural communication 42% **+** mediation of culture in a special european context 26% " there is often an overlap between these subfields of lis and other fields of study. most information retrieval research for example belongs to computer science. knowledge management is considered a subfield of management or organisational studies # # metadata pre-internet classification systems and cataloging systems were mainly concerned with two objectives 1. to provide rich bibliographic descriptions and relations between information objects and 2. to facilitate sharing of this bibliographic information across library boundaries the development of the internet and the information explosion that followed found many communities needing mechanisms for the description authentication and management of ir information. these communities developed taxonomies and controlled vocabularies to describe ir knowledge as well as unique information architectures to communicate these classifications and libraries found themselves as liaison or translator between these metadata systems. the concerns of cataloging in the internet era have gone beyond simple bibliographic descriptions and the need for descriptive information about the ownership and copyright of a digital product - a publishing concern - and description for the different formats and accessibility features of a resource - a sociological concern - show the continued development and cross discipline necessity of resource description in the 21st century the usage of open data open source and open protocols like oai-pmh has allowed thousands of libraries and institutions to collaborate on the production of global metadata services previously offered only by increasingly expensive commercial proprietary products. tools like base and unpaywall can automates the search of an academic paper across thousands of repositories by libraries and research institutions # # knowledge organisation library science is very closely related to issues of knowledge organisation; however the latter is a broader term that covers how knowledge is represented and stored (computer science/linguistics) how it might be automatically processed (artificial intelligence) and how it is organised outside the library in global systems such as the internet. in addition library science typically refers to a specific community engaged in managing holdings as they are found in university and government libraries while knowledge organisation in general refers to this and also to other communities (such as publishers) and other systems (such as the internet.) the library system is thus one socio-technical structure for knowledge organisation the terms information organisation and knowledge organisation are often used synonymously.: 106 the fundamentals of ir study (particularly theory relating to indexing and classification) and many of the main tools used by the disciplines in modern times to provide access to digital resources (abstracting- resource description systematic and alphabetic subject description and terminology) originated in the 19th century and were developed in part to assist in making humanity's intellectual output accessible by recording identifying and providing bibliographic control of printed knowledge.: 105 information has been published that analyses the relations between the philosophy of information (pi) library and information science (lis) and social epistemology (se) # # ethics practicing library professionals and members of the american library association recognize and abide by the ala code of ethics. according to the american library association "in a political system grounded in an informed citizenry we are members of a profession explicitly committed to intellectual freedom and freedom of access to information. we have a special obligation to ensure the free flow of information and ideas to present and future generations." the ala code of ethics was adopted in the winter of 1939 and updated on june 29 2021 # see also **+** authority control **+** bibliography **+** digital asset management (dam) **+** diversity in librarianship **+** glossary of library and information science **+** information history **+** internet search engines and libraries **+** libraries and the lgbtq community **+** library portal **+** list of library associations **+** museology **+** museum informatics **+** outline of library science **+** subject indexing **+** timeline of women in library science # notes 1. dewey decimal classification (ddc) used the term "library economy" for class 19 in its first edition from 1876. in the second edition (and all subsequent editions) it was moved to class 20. the term "library economy" was used until (and including) the 14th edition (1942.) from the 15th edition (1951) class 20 was termed library science which was used until (and including) 17th edition (1965) when it was replaced by "library and information sciences" (lis) from the 18th edition (1971) and forward library cataloging and classification dewey decimal: 020 **+** åström fredrik (september 5 2008.) "formalizing a discipline: the institutionalisation of library and information science research in the nordic countries." journal of documentation. 64 (5): 721-737. doi: 10.1108/00220410810899736 **+** bawden david; robinson lyn (august 20 2012.) introduction to information science. american library association. 610 **+** järvelin kalervo; vakkari pertti (january 1993.) "the evolution of library and information science 1965-1985: a content analysis of journal articles." information processing & management. 29 (1): 129-144. doi: 10.1016/0306-4573(93)90028-c **+** mcnicol sarah (march 2003.) "lis: the interdisciplinary research landscape." journal of librarianship and information science. 35 (1): 23-30. doi: 10.1177/096100060303500103. s2cid 220912521 **+** dick archie l. (1995.) "library and information science as a social science: neutral and normative conceptions." the library quarterly: information community policy. 65 (2): 216-235. doi: 10.1086/602777. jstor 4309022. s2cid 142825177 **+** international journal of library science (issn 0975-7546) **+** lafontaine gerard s. (1958.) dictionary of terms used in the paper printing and allied industries. toronto: h. smith paper mills. 110 p **+** the oxford guide to library research (2005) - **+** thompson elizabeth h. (1943.) a.l.a. glossary of library terms with a selection of terms in related fields prepared under the direction of the committee on library terminology of the american library association. chicago ill.: american library association. viii 189 p. 000 **+** v-lib 1.2 (2008 vartavan library classification over 700 fields of sciences & arts classified according to a relational philosophy currently sold under license in the uk by rosecastle ltd. (see vartavan-frame) // republic of bob