The intellectual origins of information organization (IO) as a field of study are examined by tracing the use of the terms, "information organization", "knowledge organization", "bibliographic control", and their variants, and by surveying the educational texts dealing with the various component activities of IO,…

Responsive evaluation builds upon the methods of informal evaluation in disciplined ways: getting personally acquainted with the evaluand, observation of activities, interviewing people who are in different ways familiar with the evaluand, searching documents that reveal what happened in the past or somewhere else. It calls for sustained effort to…

This article examines the evolution of a national register of the archives of science and technology in Australia and the related development of an archival informatics focused initially on people and their relationships to archival materials. The register was created in 1985 as an in-house tool for the Australian Science Archives Project of the…

Considers the meanings of the terms document, documentation, information, information retrieval, and information science. Discusses the theoretical orientations of the discipline and how they are linked to epistemological assumptions, as well as the concept of memory institutions. (Contains 38 references.) (Author/LRW)

Addresses three issues of library science in the United States during the 20th century: (1) use of European documentation efforts; (2) the "information science versus library science" argument; and (3) technological innovation in librarianship. Also examines the role of technology in library science at the University of Chicago's…

Raises fundamental questions about the scope of information science and information retrieval, and illustrates how it has evolved over the last 60 years. The work of European documentalists is described, the terminology of multimedia is examined, and image handling is discussed as a method of focusing on representations other than text. (12…

This work provides a five-language translation of 1200 technical terms covering various aspects of documentation activities including: linguistic problems; information sciences; systems analysis, design, and evaluation; cataloging and classification; and general concepts of electronic data processing. Each term is listed according to subject area,…

Discussion of the historical background of information science and documentation focuses on Paul Otlet and the creation of the International Institute of Bibliography which later became the FID (International Federation for Information and Documentation). Topics include systems and organizational arrangements, the monographic principle,…

Discusses Paul Otlet's idea of an international center for the storage and dissemination of information called "The Mundaneum." Highlights include the influence of positivism, centralism, and monumentalism on Otlet; the ideas of Georges Bataille; international coordination through a worldwide network; and the role of architectural…

Examines the work of Paul Otlet as a forerunner of hypertext and as a pioneer in the history of information science. Topics addressed include microtext systems; the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC); hypertext links, navigation, and the UDC; Offices of Documentation; multimedia; a universal network for documentation; user-centeredness; and…

Analyzes the theoretical and the epistemological assumptions of information science. Topics include users and cognition; subject analysis; methods of classification; composition, semantics, and retrieval; the meaning of information; the typology of documents; information selection and research evaluation; and information specialists and…

Describes some of the problems in documentation work rising from the habit of detaching information from any physical support, as a prevailing notion in an electronic environment. Points to the necessity of regarding information as something closely connected with preservation. Suggests a clearer distinction in information science between…

This report begins by examining the educational legislation governing the special technical schools for librarianship and information and documentation in West Germany, with emphasis on the practical approach implicit in the statutory requirements. The theoretically-grounded, practically-oriented program at the Gesellschaft fur Information und…

The 37th FID (International Federation for Documentation) Conference in The Hague in September 1974 brought together some 150 participants from 35 countries and 7 international organizations. The FID program covers the following fields: (1) theoretical studies and research in documentation, librarianship and information science, terminology,…

Reviews different structures and techniques of knowledge representation: structure of database records and files, data structures in computer programming, syntatic and semantic structure of natural language, knowledge representation in artificial intelligence, and models of human memory. A prototype expert system that makes use of some of these…