Biblioteek- en Inligtingkunde : quo vadis?

Abstract

Library and Information Science studies the information transfer problems in our society. From these scientific investigations, solutions are derived regarding the flow, organization, storage and use of information. No research, decision-making, innovation, education or community development is possible without information. Information is an essential and indispensable component of all activities. In short, human existence and development would be impossible without information. Traditionally, the library has always been an important source of information in our society. Has the end of the library, as an institution, come near? At the beginning of the so-called information era, which we live to see at present, other institutions and disciplines are also investigating certain aspects of the problems regarding the matter of information in the various spheres of our society: problems like the large volume of information which is released worldwide daily, the fact that this information is unsystematised, and the quality problem of information. Following the introduction of information technology, the information worker is now able to face these information problems with new perspectives. To achieve the optimum exploitation of these techniques on behalf of the user of information, Information Science should in future pay increasing attention to, inter alia, the following matters: information use studies the systematisation of information methods of systematisation analysis and synthesis of information in the light of users' information needs. For this reason it is necessary that Information Science should increasingly develop into an independent and distinctive discipline; that information workers should be educated, not necessarily to follow their occupations in library sevices but in any situation where they can act as intermediaries between sources of information and the user. Information Science should urgently broaden and deepen its scientific basis in order to face the challenge of future information problems.