The quest for umbrella terms in information science. Tracking the origins of and informatics

Abstract

Introduction. We report in this paper on our quest to track the ownership and different conceptions of two umbrella terms, informatology and informatics suggested as more adequate names for the field of library and information science between the 1960s-1980s. Method. Our method consisted in gathering bibliographic materials of written publications which pointed to the earliest occurrences of these terms and reading them in order to identify the priority claims about the paternity of these two terms. Analysis. We carried out content analysis of the written documents we found which helped inform our understanding of how these two terms were perceived. Our method of analysis is thus hermeneutics, i.e. based on our personal perception of what the authors had written. Our quest took us all over Europe and to the United States. Results. Our main findings are that despite efforts to promote the two umbrella terms, they failed in supplanting information science or library and information science as the preferred name for the discipline. A possible reason may be that scientific fields are in horizontal rather than hierarchical relation with one another and umbrella terms suggest some sort of hierarchy. Also, 'library economy/science' and 'documentation' had become unfashionable as computer technology was being developed and the information community was seeking for new methods and tools capable of handling machine readable information. Conclusions. Our quest also brought home the difficulty of establishing the ownership of concepts and ideas with an absolute degree of certainty.