Introduction: Rolf Landauer declared in 1991 that "information is physical". Since then, information has come to be seen by many physicists as a fundamental component of the physical world; indeed by some as the physical component. This idea is now gaining currency in popular science communication. However, it is often far from clear…

Presented as the keynote address at the Library Research Seminar, University of Maryland, October 7, 2010, this essay identifies and explores three agendas ever appropriate for study, the pursuits of which are especially needed now. They are as follows: to (1) explore the historical dimension of library topics, (2) revive study of the institution…

Introduction: This paper concerns the ontological position of library and informations science in the networked society. The aim of the study is to understand library use and library functions in the age of Internet and artificial intelligent programmed search engines. Theoretical approach: The approach discusses so called sociocognitive tools in…

Evidence-based practice as it applies to the Library and Information (LIS) sector and in particular teacher librarians is the focus of this research investigation. The context for this research is Australian school libraries and teacher librarians. This is a research in progress and the report here will include some very early findings and lessons…

This paper explores the difference between "high standards" and a "high standard of standardness" of professional service provision in teacher-librarianship. That is to say, it explores the difference between a demonstrated deep commitment to 21st century learning ("high standards") and demonstrated compliance with a pre-determined checklist of…

Library science students in school librarianship were surveyed to determine their information seeking and avoidance behaviors in Web-based online environments. Two coping styles were identified among students. Barriers to student online collaboration, such as individual preferences, concerns on efficiency, and lack of mutual trust, were observed.…

The excessive pragmatism of American librarians has thus far prevented them from formulating a defensible philosophy of librarianship because their knowledge problems cannot be resolved by action theory. Analysis of the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics of librarianship shows that its realities consist of the invisible structure of thought,…

These notes prepared for an advanced course on the theory and history of cataloging contain a summary of and comments on three aspects of Domanovszky's cataloging theory: (1) the function of the catalog is to identify all publications of a work, as well as all editions of a publication; (2) a catalog code should specify alternative practices for…

Because of its hierarchical notation, the Dewey Decimal Classification is advantageous for machine searching. However, the increased volume of topics in recent years has made recoding in the system necessary. Education, for example, is a rapidly changing field, and the Dewey Decimal Classification system has not kept pace. As a result subject…

Postwar librarians have sacrificed the humanistic basis of librarianship and regard the use of science in librarianship as a settled issue. American librarianship is currently dominated by the physical thinking of scientific systems theory, which includes Bertalanffy's general system theory, Wiener's cybernetics, and the Hartley-Shannon theory of…

The central focus of this research was to analyze the impact of ideas originating from within librarianship and information retrieval and those from other disciplines. Twelve most cited journals in librarianship and information retrieval (source specialties) were chosen for citation analysis. From these journals, 40 articles were randomly selected…

Proposes that the library profession will, in the near future, divide into two tracks--the traditional librarian and the information manager. Recommendations for adapting to this change are included: (1) technological literacy; (2) career planning; (3) changes in library education; (4) accountability for information; and (5) a more positive public…

Librarianship is the management of knowledge, not the management of nature, i.e., it is controlled by ideas, not by phenomena. The man/document interface provides a key for creating the philosophy of librarianship and a clue to the intellectual nature of the library profession. Because librarianship occurs whenever ideas are reused, librarians…

This report on the problems facing editors of professional information and library science journals in developing and developed countries suggests broad solutions that might help to transfer and make available the surplus of products in one geographic area to another in which such products are in short supply. Areas addressed include (1)…

Concerned with the many pressures to which library education is subject all over the world, this paper concentrates on the relationship between the subject of librarianship, the subject of information science, and the accommodation of information science in library education. The emergence and domain of information science is briefly reviewed, and…