Knowledge Organization (KO) is published by IMR Press from Volume 52 Issue 1 (2025). Previous articles were published by another publisher under the CC-BY licence, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement.
Library and Information Science (LIS), Part 1
Birger Hjørland 1
Affiliation
Article Info
1 Department of Information Studies, University of Copenhagen, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark
Abstract
This article outlines the history of library and information science (LIS), from its roots in library science, information science and documentation. It considers various conceptions or “paradigms” in the field and discusses the topical content of LIS as well as the relationships between LIS and other disciplines. The main argument of the article is that answers to all such questions concerning LIS are related to conceptions of LIS. It is argued that an updated version of social epistemology (SE), which was founded by Egan and Shera in 1952, may in hindsight provide the most fruitful theoretical frame for LIS. SE is related to the domain-analytic approach, which was suggested by Hjørland and Albrechtsen in 1995.