The 25 contributions to this volume, largely reprinted from recent special issues of three information science journals devoted to historical topics, address an array of topics including Paul Otlet and his successors; techniques, tools, and systems; organizations and individuals; theoretical issues; and literature. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Publisher description

This landmark textbook takes a whole subject approach to Information Science as a discipline. Introduced by leading international scholars and offering a global perspective on the discipline, this is designed to be the standard text for students worldwide. The authors' expert narrative guides you through each of the essential building blocks of information science offering a concise introduction and expertly chosen further reading and resources. Critical topics covered include: foundations: - concepts, theories and historical perspectives - organising and retrieving information - information behaviour, domain analysis and digital literacies - technologies, digital libraries and information management - information research methods and informetrics - changing contexts: information society, publishing, e-science and digital humanities - the future of the discipline. Readership: Students of information science, information and knowledge management, librarianship, archives and records management worldwide. Students of other information-related disciplines such as museum studies, publishing, and information systems and practitioners in all of these disciplines.

"This set of books represents a detailed compendium of authoritative, research-based entries that define the contemporary state of knowledge on technology"--Provided by publisher.

Science: A Four Thousand Year History rewrites science's past. Instead of focussing on difficult experiments and abstract theories, Patricia Fara shows how science has always belonged to the practical world of war, politics, and business. Rather than glorifying scientists as idealized heroes, she tells true stories about real people - men (and some women) who needed to earn their living, who made mistakes, and who trampled down their rivals in their quest for success. Fara sweeps through the centuries, from ancient Babylon right up to the latest hi-tech experiments in genetics and particle physics, illuminating the financial interests, imperial ambitions, and publishing enterprises that have made science the powerful global phenomenon that it is today. She also ranges internationally, illustrating the importance of scientific projects based around the world, from China to the Islamic empire, as well as the more familiar tale of science in Europe, from Copernicus to Charles Darwin and beyond. Above all, this four thousand year history challenges scientific supremacy, arguing controversially that science is successful not because it is always right - but because people have said that it is right.

Ever since the threads of seventeenth-century natural philosophy began to coalesce into an understanding of the natural world, printed artifacts such as laboratory notebooks, research journals, college textbooks, and popular paperbacks have been instrumental to the development of what we think of today as “science.” But just as the history of science involves more than recording discoveries, so too does the study of print culture extend beyond the mere cataloguing of books. In both disciplines, researchers attempt to comprehend how social structures of power, reputation, and meaning permeate both the written record and the intellectual scaffolding through which scientific debate takes place. Science in Print brings together scholars from the fields of print culture, environmental history, science and technology studies, medical history, and library and information studies. This ambitious volume paints a rich picture of those tools and techniques of printing, publishing, and reading that shaped the ideas and practices that grew into modern science, from the days of the Royal Society of London in the late 1600s to the beginning of the modern U.S. environmental movement in the early 1960s.

"Information technology shapes nearly every part of modern life, and debates about information--its meaning, effects, and applications--are central to a range of fields, from economics, technology, and politics to library science, media studies, and cultural studies. This rich, unique resource traces the history of information with an approach designed to draw connections across fields and perspectives, and provide essential context for our current age of information. Clear, accessible, and authoritative, the book opens with a series of articles that provide a narrative history of information from premodern practices to twenty-first-century information culture. This section focuses on major developments in the creation, storage, search, exchange, management, and manipulation of information, as well as the many meanings and uses of information over time. Coverage spans Europe, North America, and many other places and periods, including the medieval Islamic world and early modern East Asia, as well as the emergence of global networks. A second, alphabetical section includes more than 100 concise articles that cover specific concepts (e.g., data, intellectual property, privacy); formats and genres (books, databases, maps, newspapers, scrolls, social media); people (archivists, diplomats and spies, readers, secretaries, teachers); practices (censorship, forecasting, learning, surveilling, translating); processes (digitization, quantification, storage and search); systems (bureaucracy, platforms, telecommunications); technologies (algorithms, cameras, computers), and much more. The book concludes with an informative glossary, defining terms from "analog/digital" to "World Wide Web.""--

From cell phones to Web portals, advances in information and communications technology have thrust society into an information age that is far-reaching, fast-moving, increasingly complex, and yet essential to modern life. Now, renowned scholar and author David Luenberger has produced Information Science, a text that distills and explains the most important concepts and insights at the core of this ongoing revolution. The book represents the material used in a widely acclaimed course offered at Stanford University. Drawing concepts from each of the constituent subfields that collectively comprise information science, Luenberger builds his book around the five "E's" of information: Entropy, Economics, Encryption, Extraction, and Emission. Each area directly impacts modern information products, services, and technology--everything from word processors to digital cash, database systems to decision making, marketing strategy to spread spectrum communication. To study these principles is to learn how English text, music, and pictures can be compressed, how it is possible to construct a digital signature that cannot simply be copied, how beautiful photographs can be sent from distant planets with a tiny battery, how communication networks expand, and how producers of information products can make a profit under difficult market conditions. The book contains vivid examples, illustrations, exercises, and points of historic interest, all of which bring to life the analytic methods presented: Presents a unified approach to the field of information science Emphasizes basic principles Includes a wide range of examples and applications Helps students develop important new skills Suggests exercises with solutions in an instructor's manual