Information technology

"Information Technology (IT) or Information and Communication(s) Technology (ICT) is the technology required for information processing. In particular the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and retrieve information. " (Wikipedia, 2005).

The term information technology has been used in at least since Connolly (1944). The term Information and communication technology is more recent and the addition of communication is probably due to the raise of computer networks based on telecommunications (such as remote access to databases and the Internet).

Lamb's attribution of the concept [IT] appears accurate: in Cybernetics (1948) and The Human Use of Human Beings (1950), Wiener had written about the coming of a "second industrial revolution" based on the processing of information in computerized, automated factories. Lamb was wrong about the coinage, however. The term information technology arose in management science in the United States in the 1960s, where it signified computer-based mathematical techniques designed to replace mid-level managers. By the early 1980s, several discourse communities—policy analysts, business writers, managers, information scientists, and social scientists—had transformed this knowledge-based meaning into the artifactual meaning described by Lamb. (Kline, 2006, 513-514).

The study of IT and ICT is mainly based in theoretical computer science and -technology. There exists, however, a huge range of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, including social sciences and humanities, which contribute to IT/ICT (or claim to do so). (See also Gorn, 1967, 1982). Information technology (IT) has recently emerged as a separate academic discipline. The IT discipline is related to, but distinct from, computer science, information systems, and software engineering (cf., Abernethy et al., 2005; Lunt et al., 2003).

Relations between Library and Information Science (LIS) and IT/ICT.

From the perspective of IT and computer science are libraries one field of application among others (such as administration, agriculture, banks, e-business, education or entertainment). There exists special journals for this field of applied IT such as Journal of Library Automation (change of title in 1982 to Information Technology and Libraries). Some people may even mix up LIS with computer science applied to libraries and to "information storage and retrieval"

The publication Annual Review of Information Science and Technology has from its start in 1966 had IT in its title. That American Society for Information Science in year 2000 changed its name to American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) is another sign that IT is by some considered at least a part of the field of LIS.

On a more specific level one may consider Internet research. When is research about the Internet a part of LIS and when is it a part of other fields? (See Disciplinarity/interdisciplinarity: The example of Internet research). The answer is probably that research fields do not "belong" to disciplines, but that disciplines contribute to research fields in various degrees and may only claim territories to which they can document main contributions. In the field of Internet-research only certain narrow fields such as

Webometrics may be considered parts of LIS.