Addresses the importance of organizational investment in diversity and the necessity of preparing graduates and future employees in terms of learning about diversity in order for them to contribute to the success of their employing organizations. Considers the difficulties associated with education about diversity and focuses on library and…

Reviews a selection of recent studies from various disciplines on information and social equity and on the digital divide in order to outline a basic conceptual framework for considering information equity. Highlights include equity versus equality; vertical and horizontal perspectives; social capital and public goods; and intellectual property.…

Argues that special librarians are not fact keepers but "catalysts in the knowledge continuum." Examines special librarians, the information business, and knowledge management; the knowledge continuum (data, information, knowledge, behavior) and strategies for successful "transformational librarianship": organizing information,…

Describes an experiment investigating the use of structural constraints and surface semantics by modeling experts. Results indicated that when interpreting information models, modeling experts focus on the structural constraints and ignore the surface semantics, even in situations where structural constraints contradict real world situations.…

Examines the view taken of the importance of information and information technology by the government in the new democratic South Africa. Highlights include the relationship between new principles of governance and citizenship of transparency and accountability and information provision; the Reconstruction and Development Program; and the role of…

Discusses graph theory in information science, focusing on measures for the cohesion of networks. Illustrates how a set of weights between connected nodes can be transformed into a set of dissimilarity measures and presents an example of the new compactness measures for a cocitation and a bibliographic coupling network. (Author/LRW)

Introduces a scientometric model (ISI-S model) for describing the institutionalization process of scientific information. ISI-S describes the information and knowledge systems of scientific publications as a global network of interdependent information and knowledge clusters that are dynamically changing by their content and size. (Author/LRW)

Examines the nature of knowledge management, particularly how it differs from data management and information management, and its relationship to the development of expert systems and decision support systems. Considers the importance of communities of practice and tacit knowledge for knowledge management. (Author/LRW)

Considers the logico-analytic philosophy of library and information science (LIS); discusses Jurgen Habermas' theory of communicative action; examines how LIS, particularly research into librarian-patron interaction and information system design, favors an empiricist view of language and thus may be limiting its effectiveness; and suggests the…

Provides an introduction to and analysis of hermeneutics as an alternative research method for library and information science, discussing its philosophical advantages over quantitative research. The triadic process of interpretation is described as particularly suitable for advancing the theoretical foundations of library and information science.…

Identifies and examines four information science core competencies of the Du Pont Corporation's information science services: ability to conceptualize information; knowledge of internal and external information resources; understanding of information resource management; and ability to synthesize and tailor information. Describes the…

Discusses science and technology in the earliest historic prescience era, (circa 3500 BC), and from circa 1600 AD to the present, in order to consider the origins of information science and the role of information science in the future. Topics include logic and science, and deductive and inductive logic. (Author/LRW)

Outlines the elements of a revised epistemological approach to thinking about library and information science. Hermeneutical phenomenology seeks an understanding of the essence of things (such as the library) and takes into account, among other things, the intentional stances of the human actors within the realm of library and information science.…

Provides background on the historical and current status of library and information science education in China. A comparative analysis then examines similarities and differences in origin, evolution, scale, structure, curriculum, faculty, and students in library and information science education between China and the United States; and reasons for…

Explores the role of paradigms in information retrieval research and discusses the nature of a paradigm and the applicability of the paradigm concept to a multidisciplinary field such as information science. The features of the physical paradigm and the cognitive paradigm are outlined, and their origins, nature, and role are examined. (55…