This book appeared previously, in 2008, as a special issue of the Journal of Information Science, commemorating the founding of the UK Institute of Information Scientists in 1958. It is a collection of invited essays by eminent contributors on the broad topic of the development of information science in the UK. The authors are coming from different areas and they address topics from different perspectives. Their contributions, while self‐contained and also interesting each on its own, collectively paint the entire landscape.
Brian Vickery sets the stage with the editorial. He starts with some major developments 50 years ago, introduces some of the important players in the UK (and beyond) and positions information science in view of the major milestones: the computer and the Internet.
In the second chapter, “Fifty years of UK research in information science”, Jack Meadows identifies the main research themes in British information science. With obvious roots in the first half of the twentieth century, the field became established and was named in the second half of the century. While focusing on the UK, the author positions that research in a broader context of developments elsewhere, particularly the USA.
David Bawden also looks at the major research topics in the past, but through the analysis of articles in the Journal of Information Science and their influence on subsequent developments. He identifies five themes: the information discipline itself; its foundation; the nature of information; relations between theory and practice; and education for information science.
The next chapter by Stella G. Dextre Clarke also looks back to the last half century, but focuses on a specific area, the research in knowledge organisation. She systematically analyses the developments from decade to decade and the milestones: the rise of classification, thesauri, taxonomies.
Information retrieval, arguably the most known area of information science theory and practice, is covered in several chapters. The first is “On the history of evaluation” by Stephen Robertson, identifying major projects and experiments. This is followed by an analysis of visual information retrieval by Peter Enser, an extensive review of developments of theory and practice of image and video retrieval.
Specific thematic areas, chemoinformatics and health informatics, are covered by Peter Willett and Peter A. Bath respectively. Both start with the first developments, but finish with current research and challenges in the future.
Blaise Cronin looks again at the discipline itself in his chapter “The sociological turn in information science”. He analyses the influence of social sciences on the intellectual base of information science. Elisabeth Davenport explores the connections between two historical lines of research: social informatics in the USA and sociotechnical studies in the UK. Barry Mahon looks at the roles of information professionals in the last 50 years.
Information behaviour is the main topic of “The information user: past, present and future” by Tom Wilson. He identifies a disconnection between research and practice and points out an interesting phenomenon: the early research was done by practitioners whilst now academic research is prevalent.
Several authors deal with specific areas of information science. Elizabeth Orna discusses information policies. Starting from national information policies she continues to institutional information policies and emphasises their continued importance in the future. In “Bibliometrics to webometrics”, Mike Thelwall presents the field of bibliometrics and its recent developments such as patent analysis and (national) research evaluation and concludes with webometrics.
Two chapters do not deal with the past: Charles Oppenheim's “Electronic scholarly publishing and open access” is about the influence of the open‐access movement on publishers and libraries; while Wendy A. Warr writes about Web 2.0 technologies and issues of quality control, security, and privacy. The final chapter, “How I learned to love the Brits” by Eugene Garfield is a witty personal comment from the father of citation analysis.
This book is extremely valuable and will find many different readers interested in information science. For the more seasoned ones it will be a source of reminiscence, the younger ones will learn how their field has developed and consequently will understand it better. Although the focus on the UK is often mentioned, it is by no means local; it provides a much broader view. Some will read the book as a monograph, all chapters from beginning to end, to gain understanding of the whole field; others, interested in narrow areas, will read individual chapters. I am quite impressed by extensive lists of references in all chapters, providing additional or background reading.
I am confident that the decision to republish this special issue of the Journal of Information Science will prove to be right: either the whole book or individual chapters will definitely be appearing in the lists of required reading of many advanced courses in information science.
