Information science
Definitions reliant on the nature of the tools used for deriving meaningful information from data are emerging in Informatics academic programs.
[16] An ontology renders shared vocabulary and taxonomy which models a domain with the definition of objects and/or concepts and their properties and relations.
[17] Ontologies are the structural frameworks for organizing information and are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, systems engineering, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, enterprise bookmarking, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it.
Often systems analysts work with one or more businesses to evaluate and implement organizational processes and techniques for accessing information in order to improve efficiency and productivity within the organization(s).
Information analysis has been carried out by scholars at least as early as the time of the Assyrian Empire with the emergence of cultural depositories, what is today known as libraries and archives.
[23] Academie de Chirurgia (Paris) published Memoires pour les Chirurgiens, generally considered to be the first medical journal, in 1736.
As numerous other scientific journals and societies were founded, Alois Senefelder developed the concept of lithography for use in mass printing work in Germany in 1796.
In 1801, Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a punched card system to control operations of the cloth weaving loom in France.
In 1854 George Boole published An Investigation into Laws of Thought..., which lays the foundations for Boolean algebra, which is later used in information retrieval.
[26] In 1860 a congress was held at Karlsruhe Technische Hochschule to discuss the feasibility of establishing a systematic and rational nomenclature for chemistry.
The congress did not reach any conclusive results, but several key participants returned home with Stanislao Cannizzaro's outline (1858), which ultimately convinces them of the validity of his scheme for calculating atomic weights.
By 1872 Lord Kelvin devised an analogue computer to predict the tides, and by 1875 Frank Stephen Baldwin was granted the first US patent for a practical calculating machine that performs four arithmetic functions.
[25] Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison invented the telephone and phonograph in 1876 and 1877 respectively, and the American Library Association was founded in Philadelphia.
Otlet not only imagined that all the world's knowledge should be interlinked and made available remotely to anyone, but he also proceeded to build a structured document collection.
Additionally, traditional boundaries among disciplines began to fade and many information science scholars joined with other programs.
Among the individuals who had distinct opportunities to facilitate interdisciplinary activity targeted at scientific communication was Foster E. Mohrhardt, director of the National Agricultural Library from 1954 to 1968.
[33] By the 1980s, large databases, such as Grateful Med at the National Library of Medicine, and user-oriented services such as Dialog and Compuserve, were for the first time accessible by individuals from their personal computers.
By the end of the decade, special interest groups were available involving non-print media, social sciences, energy and the environment, and community information systems.
All major news providers have visibility and an access point through networks such as Facebook and Twitter maximizing their breadth of audience.
Although, it is often mutually beneficial for publishers and Facebook to "share, promote and uncover new content"[37] to improve both user base experiences.
Social media allows interaction through simple to learn and access tools; The Wall Street Journal offers an app through Facebook, and The Washington Post goes a step further and offers an independent social app that was downloaded by 19.5 million users in six months,[37] proving how interested people are in the new way of being provided information.
Information architecture (IA) is the art and science of organizing and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability.
[38] It is an emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing together principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
Many universities and public libraries use IR systems to provide access to books, journals and other documents.
Depending on the application the data objects may be, for example, text documents, images,[40] audio,[41] mind maps[42] or videos.
Much library and information science (LIS) research has focused on the information-seeking practices of practitioners within various fields of professional work.
The authors proposed an analytic model of professionals' information seeking behaviour, intended to be generalizable across the professions, thus providing a platform for future research in the area.
The model was intended to "prompt new insights... and give rise to more refined and applicable theories of information seeking" (Leckie, Pettigrew & Sylvain 1996, p. 188).
Recent studies in this topic address the concept of information-gathering that "provides a broader perspective that adheres better to professionals' work-related reality and desired skills.
Logic is used to supply formal semantics of how reasoning functions should be applied to the symbols in the KR system.
