Information science is neither

Information science is not a science, nor is it primarily about information. In this paper, an argument is developed in support of the latter claim. A working definition of information is proposed, and doubts are raised about the extent to which each of five core subfields of information science/studies (information behavior, information retrieval, infometrics, information organization, and information ethics) has to do with information as defined. Several alternative candidates for the primary phenomenon of interest shared by those working in all five subfields are considered: these include data studies; knowledge studies; metadata studies; representation studies; relevance studies; and (as a branch of cultural studies) collection, preservation, and access studies. A prime candidate is identified, and some implications of such a reading for the application of philosophical approaches to information science/studies are highlighted

Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality

Building upon a process-and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities. A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality -- primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies -- reveals patterns in youth's information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation. Looking at the phenomenon from an information-learning and educational perspective, the literature shows that youth develop competencies for personal goals that sometimes do not transfer to school, and are sometimes not appropriate for school. Thus far, educational initiatives to educate youth about search, evaluation, or creation have depended greatly on the local circumstances for their success or failure

A review on analysis and synthesis of nonlinear stochastic systems with randomly occurring incomplete information

Copyright q 2012 Hongli Dong et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.In the context of systems and control, incomplete information refers to a dynamical system in which knowledge about the system states is limited due to the difficulties in modeling complexity in a quantitative way. The well-known types of incomplete information include parameter uncertainties and norm-bounded nonlinearities. Recently, in response to the development of network technologies, the phenomenon of randomly occurring incomplete information has become more and more prevalent. Such a phenomenon typically appears in a networked environment. Examples include, but are not limited to, randomly occurring uncertainties, randomly occurring nonlinearities, randomly occurring saturation, randomly missing measurements and randomly occurring quantization. Randomly occurring incomplete information, if not properly handled, would seriously deteriorate the performance of a control system. In this paper, we aim to survey some recent advances on the analysis and synthesis problems for nonlinear stochastic systems with randomly occurring incomplete information. The developments of the filtering, control and fault detection problems are systematically reviewed. Latest results on analysis and synthesis of nonlinear stochastic systems are discussed in great detail. In addition, various distributed filtering technologies over sensor networks are highlighted. Finally, some concluding remarks are given and some possible future research directions are pointed out. © 2012 Hongli Dong et al.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61273156, 61134009, 61273201, 61021002, and 61004067, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of the UK under Grant GR/S27658/01, the Royal Society of the UK, the National Science Foundation of the USA under Grant No. HRD-1137732, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of German

Warriors, allies or spectators: a look at stakeholders’ perception of the role of libraries and librarians in the fake news phenomenon

The recent debate on fake news and critical thinking is invading the national and international scene. Strategies to counterfeit the phenomenon are issued everywhere: IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) built a campaign around its infographic tool; at the same time, the Internet giants are beginning to change their attitude and position with respect to fake news as a result of public pressure – e.g. Facebook and the scandal of Cambridge Analytica. Libraries and librarians think they could play an important role, being their job about knowledge and information management, but does anyone else think along the same lines? An article published on Science with the explicit goal of starting a "science of fake news", advocated an interdisciplinary approach, yet hardly any reference was made to Library and Information studies. The same happened in the recent EU Public consultation on fake news and online disinformation - neither libraries nor schools were counted among the stakeholders. Someone may argue that news is outside the scope of the library mission; yet preserving documentation and helping people to find and evaluate information effectively definitely is: the actions undertaken by EBLIDA (European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation) advocate for a role for libraries. Based on this scenario, the present paper will reflect on the concept of fake news in the light of library and information science – thus defining the field and its limits. Subsequently, it will analyse policy documents addressing the issue, to verify whether libraries and library studies are considered stakeholders by external observers. Method: documents on Fake News will be scanned looking for mentions of libraries on the websites of European Union, USA, Canada, Great Britain and Italy. An overall scan will also be carried out on the role of libraries in relation to fake news in research articles

Domain analysis of the literature on COVID-19 in Information Science’s national context

In the past two years, science has been mobilized around studies centered on the new pandemic phenomenon known as COVID-19, a variation of the coronavirus with higher transmission capacity and higher mortality. Thus, as a way of investigating the state of the art of this topic in the field of Information Science, this research sought to answer the following question: what is the Brazilian scientific production in Information Science regarding the COVID-19 pandemic? As main justification, we understand that systematically identifying and disseminating those studies may help the construction of an appropriate theoretical survey on the theme in the national scope. To support our research theoretically and methodologically, we reserved a section to explore Domain Analysis (DA). Proposed by Hjørland and Albrechtsen (1995) around Information Science, this approach allows us to analyze domains of knowledge from their social interactions as discursive communities. Then, we describe the context of information in health, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic context. This is a quali-quantitative research: we made a textual analysis of the keywords found in the articles that make up the corpus and applied bibliometric criteria to identify occurrence patterns of the most productive authors and journals. Being a descriptive-exploratory research, we aimed to describe how the pandemic phenomenon influenced textual production in the context of Information Science, seeking to better explore the theme and look for possible understandings and reflections about the subject. It was possible to infer that the scientific dissemination of knowledge around this theme is closely related to research in information in health, and it even includes a new term in this perspective: “infodemia” (infodemic), a term that is related to the vastness of information made available via the web, especially on social media. In addition to that, the incidence frequency of terms such as comunidade (community) and competência em informação (information competence)

Plurality of Traditions and Metatheories in Information Science

Information science presupposes multi traditions because of its close relationship to the convergence of several fields of science that saw epistemic and practical needs and demands due to the phenomenon of the information revolution and information and communication technology (ICT). The multi traditions in information science are relevant to explain limitless study objects in information science in understanding reality and ways of gaining knowledge throughout the development of science. A previous study on ontology and epistemology shows that there is a limitation on human reasoning on the understanding reality that affects further development of science. The plurality of traditions enables seeing information sciences from many different perspectives. The question posed is what methodological assumptions, approaches, and methods are used to direct and base this field of inquiry? The phenomenological hermeneutic method is used to be able to understand and interpret texts relating to ontological and epistemological views in information science. As a result, there is a dualism of views in information science that positions it in different epistemic constellations. The view that puts forward knowledge as the object of study uses the social epistemological approach as its theoretical foundation. Meanwhile, the view that emphasizes information as an object of knowledge underlies its conceptual foundation on information philosophy. This epistemic change changes the paradigm, approach, method, and position of the epistemology and ultimately repositioned the scientific area. This methodological pluralism also presupposes the involvement of evaluative-ethical dimensions so that norms and values become a source of reference in gaining knowledge. In other words, the development of science should not only focus on the use of descriptive-explanatory scientific language

Plurality of Traditions and Metatheories in Information Science

Information science presupposes multi traditions because of its close relationship to the convergence of several fields of science that saw epistemic and practical needs and demands due to the phenomenon of the information revolution and information and communication technology (ICT). The multi traditions in information science are relevant to explain limitless study objects in information science in understanding reality and ways of gaining knowledge throughout the development of science. A previous study on ontology and epistemology shows that there is a limitation on human reasoning on the understanding reality that affects further development of science. The plurality of traditions enables seeing information sciences from many different perspectives. The question posed is what methodological assumptions, approaches, and methods are used to direct and base this field of inquiry? The phenomenological hermeneutic method is used to be able to understand and interpret texts relating to ontological and epistemological views in information science. As a result, there is a dualism of views in information science that positions it in different epistemic constellations. The view that puts forward knowledge as the object of study uses the social epistemological approach as its theoretical foundation. Meanwhile, the view that emphasizes information as an object of knowledge underlies its conceptual foundation on information philosophy. This epistemic change changes the paradigm, approach, method, and position of the epistemology and ultimately repositioned the scientific area. This methodological pluralism also presupposes the involvement of evaluative-ethical dimensions so that norms and values become a source of reference in gaining knowledge. In other words, the development of science should not only focus on the use of descriptive-explanatory scientific language

Information Overload: An Overview

For almost as long as there has been recorded information, there has been a perception that humanity has been overloaded by it. Concerns about 'too much to read' have been expressed for many centuries, and made more urgent since the arrival of ubiquitous digital information in the late twentieth century. The historical perspective is a necessary corrective to the often, and wrongly, held view that it is associated solely with the modern digital information environment, and with social media in particular. However, as society fully experiences Floridi's Fourth Revolution, and moves into hyper-history (with society dependent on, and defined by, information and communication technologies) and the infosphere (a information environment distinguished by a seamless blend of online and offline information actvity), individuals and societies are dependent on, and formed by, information in an unprecedented way, information overload needs to be taken more seriously than ever. Overload has been claimed to be both the major issue of our time, and a complete non-issue. It has been cited as an important factor in, inter alia, science, medicine, education, politics, governance, business and marketing, planning for smart cities, access to news, personal data tracking, home life, use of social media, and online shopping, and has even influenced literature The information overload phenomenon has been known by many different names, including: information overabundance, infobesity, infoglut, data smog, information pollution, information fatigue, social media fatigue, social media overload, information anxiety, library anxiety, infostress, infoxication, reading overload, communication overload, cognitive overload, information violence, and information assault. There is no single generally accepted definition, but it can best be understood as that situation which arises when there is so much relevant and potentially useful information available that it becomes a hindrance rather than a help. Its essential nature has not changed with changing technology, though its causes and proposed solutions have changed much. The best ways of avoiding overload, individually and socially, appear to lie in a variety of coping strategies, such as filtering, withdrawing, queuing, and 'satisficing'. Better design of information systems, effective personal information management, and the promotion of digital and media literacies, also have a part to play. Overload may perhaps best be overcome by seeking a mindful balance in consuming information, and in finding understanding