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.
