In August 1978, one hundred or so scholars from several countries around the world met in Crete, Greece to discuss the progress made in designing information systems and the relation of information science to this activity. This was the Third Advanced Study Institute supported by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Brussels, Belgium. The first Institute was conducted in 1972 and held in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania. The results of this Institute were published by Marcel Dekker and titled Information Sc. ience: Search for Identity. The'second Institute was held at the College of Librarianship, Aberystwyth, Wales in the summer of 1974. The proceedings were published by Noordhoff International Publishing, Leyden, The Netherlands, entitled Perspectives of Information Science edited by A. Debons and Hilliam Cameron. The three institutes that were conducted shared a common purpose, namely, to assess the state of affairs of information science and to share this assessment with inter national community. Information science can be said to have emerged during the past two, three decades in response to the significant increase in data-knowledge processing technology, the growth of knowledge as the result of these trends and the increase in problem solving, decision making complexity that faced all institutions at all levels throughout the world. Information systems, for many reasons, remain as an abstraction. Nevertheless, considerable funds and human efforts are being expended on them. Thus, such systems are of vital concerns to both scientists and technologists who are involved in them."

Although system analysis is a well established methodology, the specific application of such analysis to information systems is a relatively new endeavor. Indeed, it may be said to be still in the trial-and-error stage. In recent years, such analysis has been given impetus by the numerous accounts of information system failures, some of which have led to serious consequences -e.g., the accident at Three Mile Island, the chemical spills at Bophal, India, and at Institute, West Virginia, and the loss of the space shuttle Challenger. Analysis of the failure of the W. T. Grant Company, the third largest retail organization in the United States, indicated that improper use of the available information was a significant factor in that failure. In spite of these incidents and their widespread impact, only meager attempts have been made to develop an effective methodology for analyzing the information systems involved in such incidents. There have been no well developed guidelines for determining the causes of such events and for recommending solutions so that similar failures could be avoided. To address the need for such a methodology, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) sponsored an Advanced Research Workshop attended by a group of 32 scientists, scholars, and expert investigators, representing a variety of disciplines and countries.

In the present generation, the attention paid to information continues to grow in importance. Much of this attention has been the result of an explosion in data-processing technology, with computers serving as the primary catalyst. However, other national events, such as hurricanes, floods, crime, and terror, are clearly tied to the importance of obtaining and processing information in our daily lives as well. For the last several decades, educational systems have responded to these technological advances by introducing, at an early age, the important role data-processing technology presents and will continue to represent. Many schools now include courses in computer science as part of their curriculum. Information Science 101 helps high school and college freshman identify and understand careers in information science. With this text, author Anthony Debons, one of the early founders of the discipline of Information Science, gives attention to the role of various disciplines in the field: library/documentation, tele-transmission, computer science and practice, decision making/problem solving, knowledge organization, and management. With examples, illustrations, chapter summaries, and exercises to help marry the human with the technological aspects of the field, this text gives a complete overview of Information Science, from its origins to the future of the field.