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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.
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