The term ‘information science’ goes back to 1955 and is part of a family of concepts including ‘information theory’ and ‘information storage and retrieval’ that developed in the aftermath of Claude Shannon’s ‘information theory’ (1948)[1]. Shannon’s theory also inspired research into problems in fields formerly known as library science and documentation, and these subjects were the main focus of what became established as ‘information science’, which from 1964 onwards was often termed ‘library and information science’ (LIS).
However, the usefulness of information theory as the theoretical foundation of the field has been challenged. Among the competing theoretical frameworks, ‘the cognitive view’ became influential from the 1970s, but it has also been strongly criticized. Information science is today very fragmented, but a growing number of researchers find that the problems in the field should be understood from a social and cultural perspective, thereby re-establishing connections with previous idea’s suggested in this field.