Information science

Library and Information Science (LIS) has many bordering fields. There are many research areas which are concerned with problems of communication, culture, documents, information, knowledge, knowledge utilization and so on.

Below is shown one model (of many possible) taken from Swedish Library Research, 1993, issue 2-3 (cover).

One may ask: What can the different disciplines contribute to LIS? (or what have they contributed?) The figure below outlines such possible or actual contributions:

Some interdisciplinary perspectives on LIS-phenomena
Computer science	Automation, formalization, Artificial Intelligence
Behavioral & cognitive sciences	Individual processes and capacities. Short- and long term memory. Information input overload. Concepts and meaning. Human-computer-Interaction (HCI)
Sociology	Knowledge production, intermediation and utilization. Producers, intermediaries and users. Division of labor in disciplines and ”discourse communities”. Primary, secondary and tertiary levels. ”Semantic distances”.
Philosophy	Criteria for and views on knowledge (epistemologies). Methodological ideals in the represented knowledge and consequences for optimization of representation and intermediation.
Linguistics	Terminology and LSP. Natural Language Processing.
Economics and political science	Power relations in knowledge production, intermediating and -utilization. Commercial, public and "non-profit" interests and functions.
Management & Business Science	Information Resources Management, IRM. Quality Management (TQM); Management Information Systems (MIS) and ”Information Systems research”
Law	Copyright and its influence on information dissemination and utilization.
History and cultural studies (including institutional perspectives)	Development of science, and symbolic systems (language, writing, numbers, music etc.), Development of knowledge organization, media, genres etc. Development of memory institutions: Libraries, archives, museums, information systems etc.

What fields that should be considered most important depends on a theoretical analysis of information science.

Smith, L. C. (1992). Interdisciplinarity: approaches to understand library and information science as an interdisciplinary field. IN: Conceptions of Library and Information Science. Historical, empirical and theoretical perspectives. Ed. by Pertti Vakkari & Blaise Cronin. London: Taylor Graham, pp. 253-267.