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Purpose — This chapter describes how incoherent government policies implemented in the first two decades (1970–1990) following the official recognition of Information science (IS) as an academic discipline within the broader interdiscipline of Information and Communication Sciences (ICS), shaped the current landscape of IS in France. This led to a narrow conception of IS often reduced to a technical specialty solving the problem of information explosion by setting up bibliographic databases, document indexing and delivery services.

Design/methodology/approach — The approach is historical and comparative. The author relies on earlier accounts by previous French authors and performs a comparison with the situation of IS in Anglophone countries (United States mostly).

Findings — The historical narrow conception of IS is now outdated. IS neither plays the role of gatekeeper anymore to scientific and technical information nor to information access since the generalisation of Internet search engines. Its scientific community in France lacks identity and is fast dwindling. Also, its problematics are not properly identified.

Research limitations/implications — Field work involving interviews of French figures and archival research could not be carried out in the limited time and means available. This needs to be done in the future.

Practical implications — This chapter should stimulate more comparative approach on the way Library & Information Science (LIS) is structured in other countries. Although the French situation appears unique in that IS is embedded within an interdiscipline (ICS) and does not exist autonomously, other similarities could be found in other countries where IS has had a similar trajectory and lessons could be learned.

Social implications — This chapter may serve as a stepping stone for future research on the historical foundations and epistemology of IS in France and elsewhere. It should also help disseminate to the LIS community at large how the French IS landscape has been evolving, since most French scholars publish in French, language has indeed been a barrier to disseminating their research worldwide.

Originality/value — There has not been a recent and comprehensive study which has looked at the peculiarities of the French IS landscape but also at the commonalities it shares with the situation of IS in other countries with respect to how the field originated and how it has evolved.