Today the organization comprises professionals from various fields including engineering, linguistics, librarianship, education, chemistry, computer science, and medicine.

Members share "a common interest in improving the ways society stores, retrieves, analyzes, manages, archives and disseminates information ".

Their first microfilm laboratories were located in the U.S.Department of Agriculture Library in Washington, DC and the Institute distributed materials through the newly created Bibliofilm Service.

With the advancement of technology the traditional boundaries began to fade and library schools started to add "information" in the titles of their programs.

[9][1] The popularity of personal computers in the 1980s marks a shift that allows individuals to access large databases, such as Grateful Med at the National Library of Medicine, and user-oriented services such as Dialog and CompuServe from their homes.

Eventually other groups were created, such as: non-print media, social sciences, energy and the environment, and community information systems.

[1] Today ASIS&T is at the forefront of examining the technical bases, social consequences, and theoretical understanding of the information society.

They also study the effects of widespread use of databases in government, industry, and education, and the development of information environments on the Internet and World Wide Web.