Information Science in Transition

Citation

Spink, A. (2010), "Information Science in Transition", Online Information Review, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 510-511. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684521011054116

This book is a collection of papers that were previously published in the Journal of Information Science and written largely by information science academics from the UK. Two papers are by authors not living in the UK – Eugene Garfield from ISI Philadelphia and Blaise Cronin from Indiana University (an Irishman by origin). Overall, as an Australian anglophile and colonial (but US‐trained information science academic), I found the book an interesting read, with some papers more interesting than others. I had previously met many of the authors and was certainly interested in what they had to say.

The book is definitely a history more than a coherent way forward for the field of information science in the UK, although some papers do conclude with paragraphs charting a possible way forward in certain research areas. The first two papers are editorials by Alan Gilchrist and Brian Vickery that are largely historical. These are followed by an in‐depth discussion of the past 50 years of UK research in information science by Jack Meadows from Loughborough University. The paper by David Bawden from City University in London provides further valuable background and history. These papers provided me, as an Australian whose career has largely been in US universities, with a valuable overview of UK information science research.

Of course, it is often said that US information science researchers do not cite the UK research and vice versa. This book is valuable for that reason. The book allows all those non‐UK information scientists in the US, Canada, Europe and elsewhere to understand and appreciate more clearly the UK contribution to the field of information science. Unfortunately, no similar books have emerged from other countries. Information scientists still tend to be a somewhat parochial, and the field lacks a truly international information science conference that covers the whole field. Of course, there are specialty international information science conferences, such as the information behaviour conference at Aberdeen University in Scotland. However, even the ASIST (American Society for Information Science and Technology) Conference cannot claim to be the international conference for the field.

Also valuable are the papers devoted to the last 50 years of UK research into information organisation by Stella G. Dextre Clarke and evaluation in information retrieval by Stephen Robertson. The sociological aspects of information science research have developed through theories and studies related to socio‐technical systems. This stream of UK research, is reflected in the papers by Blaise Cronin, and Elizabeth Davenport. One of the strongest papers, is authored by Peter Willett, from the University of Sheffield, who is an expert in chemical informatics. This has been an outstanding area of information science research in the UK.

Further areas of contribution by UK researchers are identified in papers about health informatics, visual information retrieval and information policy. Researchers such as Orna and Oppenheim have led the UK information science community in policy areas. Additional papers discuss professional qualifications, user studies, scholarly publishing and social software. Another particularly strong paper is by Mike Thelwall from Wolverhampton University, who is an expert on bibliometrics and webometrics. I learnt quite a lot from Thelwall's paper about the h‐index and the various approaches to academic evaluation used in different countries.

The final paper by Eugene Garfield is less an overview or summary and more a chatty piece based on his personal observations. This means that the book does seem to lack a concluding framework and summary. I was expecting some sort of model showing the changes in the UK field of information science over time. However, overall the book is certainly a “must read” for all information science researchers. More than anything the book provides valuable insights into the people in the field in the UK (mainly male information science professors – retired or otherwise) and their interpretation of what they think their field in the UK has accomplished over the last 50 years. The field in the UK seems to have achieved quite a lot as a major player on the world stage of information science and continues to do so.