Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to contribute to a reflection on the emergence and evolution of information science, taking into consideration the context in which it is inserted. The information and knowledge society requires a science that studies the properties of information and the processes of its construction, communication, and use, based on the aggregation of existing literature. This chapter is a descriptive research, with the goal of identifying and characterizing the properties of information as an object of study of information sciences and the processes of its use as an industry. The structure of the chapter synthesizes the existing academic work, seeking to generate new knowledge. The results can be used to integrate the properties of the information in the different properties and/or areas of knowledge. The chapter seeks to firstly identify the properties and the apparent processes and then focuses in greater detail on some of them.
TopIt is difficult to point the emergence of a new science even in the case of a recent scientific discipline such as information science. However, Foskett (l969) and Ingwersen (l992) indicate the date of l958 as one of the landmarks in the formalization of the new discipline when it was founded in the United Kingdom the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS). To Meadows (l990) describes the origin of the new discipline from the specialized libraries (in industrial and other organizations).
According to Meadows (l990) discipline has undergone a sharp development after World War II due to the emergence of the mathematical theory of Information described by Shannon and Weaver in the late 40. This theory was adopted by many other areas, because it explains the problems of transmission of messages through mechanical communication channels. The industrialization of commercial press promoted literature phenomenon explosion not less important than the advent of the Gutenberg press occurred about1450, whose effects were more evident after the Second World War.
Its contribution to the development of information science was small but important to the history of the area, since they attracted attention for two needs. First to clearly define the nature of the information with which the professionals of the area concerned and, second, to set the framework to be applied in the Organization of that type of information. According to (Days, 2002), that is the consensus of the authors of the area that the information science emerged in the mid-20th century.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Profitability of Information: Information is a complex concept, ubiquitous since the emergence of life and inherent in any evolutionary process, and thus served and continues to serve as a framework for reflection so much in biology, physics, psychology, management, linguistics, and in many other branches of science. The power of information resulted from the development of information and communication technologies during the twentieth century, such as occurred two centuries ago with the concept of energy, a key factor of the industrial revolution.