Information science, historical changes and social aspects: a nordic outlook

This paper analyses and discusses some aspects concerning the historical and social context of information science and information institutions. The starting point is a speech on the history of the librarian delivered in 1934 by the Spanish philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset. On the one hand Ortega y Gasset makes a brief analysis of the social need for books and the tasks of librarians from a historical point of view. In this aspect he is related to the classical way of studying libraries in the context of the history of civilisation and to the paradigm of the thirties which viewed the library as a social institution. On the other hand Ortega y Gasset is aware of new phenomena in the changing world of knowledge. From this starting point the article analyses how historical changes in this century may have influenced information science (and the forerunners library science and documentation) with regard to changing conceptions of the structure, foci and content of the discipline. The paradigms and frameworks analysed include: a pre‐war paradigm viewing the library as a social institution; the physical paradigm; the cognitive view; and alternative perspectives in the nineties representing a new tendency towards an integration of the social dimension of the discipline, based on, among other views, sociology of science, hermeneutics and semiotics. Among the alternative views in the nineties domain analysis gives the most promising demonstration of a historically and sociologically integrated perspective.