"In Library and Information Science [LIS], information explosion is a term used for the ever increasing rate of publication" (Wikipedia, 2005).
An explosion is mostly understood as a sudden great increase. Sometimes it is associated with geometrical growth. Derek J. de Solla Price in various works demonstrated the geometric growth of scientific publications and his publications are classics in the literature about literature growth and "information explosion".
Henning Spang-Hanssen was critical about this use of the term information explosion. He wrote:
"If to inform (or INFORMATION as an act or process) is to mean something other than to talk or to write, the INFORMEE will be an indispensable factor (even though he need not be known by name). In other words: a person cannot reasonably be called an INFORMANT unless he has at least an intention to INFORM (someone). Nevertheless, one of the most popular expressions relating to documentation work, namely the INFORMATION EXPLOSION, disregards the INFORMEE(S). What is called the information explosion can in the first place be termed only the publication explosion, or even the paper explosion: the number of printed pages in professional journals and books is increasing at a rate that can be described by an exponential function, like explosions. This, however, does not form an explosion of information, unless the number of printed pages is proportional to the amount of information resulting from the production and the distribution of these pages. In other words, when using the expression "the information explosion" we tacitly assume that professional papers contain information to a constant degree, regardless of their number, and regardless of their being utilized by informee(s).
The underlying conception of information is not particularly useful. It might be, e.g. that the users are able only to utilize a limited amount of literature, regardless of how much literature is produced; in that case the total outcome of information processes cannot exceed the limit set by the informees, and no information explosion can take place. One might even imagine, that an explosion-like growth of produced literature would have a lowering effect on the total utilization of the literature, i.e. would tend to decrease the total outcome of information processes: people could react as if they were being choked.
Even in other respects the growth of the number of printed pages seems to be too primitive a measure of information. Scientific and other professional papers are not produced exclusively for informative purposes, but also as tokens of activity and as means of increasing some status; the need to publish – in order not to perish – seems to play a more important part than earlier. It should also be noted that professional papers become obsolete as means of information at a much quicker rate than earlier. This means that even if the number of pages per year doubles every ten years, the total number of pages relevant today may not to a correspondingly high degree exceed the total number of pages relevant ten years ago. The quick "death" of much professional literature is not to deplore; actually many professional papers are nowadays meant to be only temporary means in research and instruction – it is just a pity that they are not printed with vanishing ink! As documentalists we shall remember that users are normally badly assisted by obsolete information. The relativity of information even applies to time.
I, therefore, am very skeptical of attempts at measuring growth of information by the growth of literature. There are interesting conclusions to be drawn from studies of e.g. the growth of scientific periodicals (cf. Price 1956, pp. 240–3), but they do not necessarily apply to information." (Spang-Hanssen, 2001).